A Devil's Bargain
by Sigma
Summary: What if you find something unexpected and then you are forced to give it up?
1. Chapter 1

Title: A Devil's Bargain Author: Sigma  
  
Email: Sigma13_2000@yahoo.co.uk  
  
Rating: R  
  
Summary: What if you find something unexpected and then you are forced to give it up?  
  
Spoilers: Possible early Season 2 spoilers, but this is VERY AU. You have been warned.  
  
Ship: Syd/Sark, brief mention of Syd/Vaughn  
  
Disclaimer: I own nothing! Nothing! Unless you want to take my fridge. So please don't sue me. As with all true Alias fans this is merely a pitiable attempt at homage, rather than copyright theft.  
  
Notes: This is very AU and spans a period of about twenty years. It's unashamedly sappy. It also jumps all over the place in terms of time and canon has gone completely out of the window. For ease of reading pleasure, just try and take each bit as it comes, otherwise you'll be hopelessly confused. Oh - and I apologise in advance for any confusion caused by the spelling, as I'm British and we're weird that way.  
  
A Devil's Bargain  
  
I have the best Dad in the world. When I was growing up he was always there, bedtimes and stories, hugs and toast soldiers on Saturday mornings, school plays and riding lessons.  
  
As I grew older my priorities changed but he remained constant, through boyfriends and break-ups, defensive driving classes and exams. The only problem I ever had was dissuading him from breaking a few ex-suitors arms when they bruised my heart.  
  
He taught me all the things a girl would want to know from her Dad and a little bit more. I think I'm one of the few who really know how to use my stilettos as an offensive weapon. I can hotwire your car in 60 seconds and incapacitate you in 10. I'm fluent in 4 languages and able to get by in 2 more.  
  
And the one thing I have always known for certain is that my father loves me more than anyone else on the planet. I am the centre of his heart and his empire, his precious pearl, his baby and the jewel in his crown.  
  
I have deep brown hair and hazel eyes. My Dad says I look just like my Mother.  
  
And yesterday my Dad finally sat me down and told me who I really was.  
  
My name is Elena Sark and I am the product of a Devil's Bargain.  
  
*******************  
  
It's difficult to keep your guard up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As weeks turn into months it becomes even harder. And even as you know you are being handled it becomes increasingly difficult not to relax into the illusion of safety, of concern for your well being - even as the illusion changes into reality.  
  
The first sign is when the hand brushes your shoulder and you forget to flinch. Hours become days and you accept that causal touch, forgetting that domestication always did start with the little things. Little intimacies follow each other, gentle invasions of your personal space, and each first time you startle like a feral animal and then slowly, slowly accept. Until the hand on the shoulder, the palm in the centre of your back, the gentle caress that tucks your hair out of your eyes become familiar and therefore accepted. Comfortable. When does the illusion of relaxation become the real thing? When do you first lean into the caress instead of holding yourself rigidly erect? When do you first realise that trust has grown from a feigned commodity into a genuine, solid reality?  
  
And only sometimes, as he holds you in your bed, as you bite at his lips in playful passion, and he pours himself into you and you curl yourself around him in real honest-to-god desire and undeniable joy, do you wonder how you got here, how it came to this, to this man, in this bed, at this time. And then he slams into you harder and you arch in ecstasy, calling out his name, and he gasps into your neck, voice hoarse and demanding.  
  
"Say my name again, Sydney -say my name!" And as you crest the wave, clasping him hard between your thighs you keen out his name to the sky.  
  
"Andrew - GOD, Andrew, SARK!"  
  
*****************  
  
Headquarters of SD-6, 18 months earlier  
  
"Currently we are working on the assumption that this latest expansion of Sovanov's network into the Middle East.." Sydney found herself slowly drifting off as Sloane's voice continued his monotone in the background. Across the table Dixon caught her eye and the merest hint of a smile curled up his lips as he acknowledged the look of abject boredom on his partner's face.  
  
It had been remarkably quiet at SD-6 lately. Admittedly quiet was a relative term when working for an evil organisation with fingers in every pie - but still, it had been.uneventful. And even if she only admitted it to herself the lack of her normal diet of high speed chases and life and death situations had left her feeling a little restless. And unfortunately it was nothing even the most hard core work out at the gym could allay. She pouted slightly. Yes, she was a founder member of AA - Adrenalin Anonymous, and just now she was craving her habit. She shifted slightly in her seat and attempted to focus on Sloane's monotone delivery.  
  
Sark caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and mentally chuckled as he took in the carefully attentive look that was plastered across Agent Bristow's face. She was such a bad liar. Unless she was on a mission everything she though or felt tended to flow across her face like clear water, infinitely easy to read for a man like him. Just now she was bored. Bored, bored, bored. Not that he could blame her, for the manipulative genius the man undoubtedly was, Sloane gave a truly monotonous briefing.  
  
Sydney was drifting again when the change in timbre of Sloane's voice jerked her back into focus ".long time insertion and operation in the central belts of Asia and the Middle East." What?  
  
She sat upright in her seat and tucked her hair behind her ear in concern. "Excuse me, could you just repeat that?" Sloane frowned in mild irritation. "As I just said, Agent Bristow, we are considering the possibility of a long term insertion mission into Sovanov's network." She frowned. And this was relevant how? Operations didn't generally deal with long term insertion. That was for Intelligence, with its posse of sleeper agents and their softly, softly approach. She and Dixon were more of a smash and grab team, both by training and disposition. Short periods of intense action, that was her thing, not the long, mind numbing tension of living day to day in the enemy camp, unable to make a move and surrounded by people who would kill you as soon as look at you. She caught that thought as it streaked through her head and smiled internally at the irony. Not so different from her situation now after all, but at least here she had Will and Francie and her Father.  
  
And Vaughn. She had Vaughn.  
  
She didn't know how she would deal if she didn't have at least one person to whom she could trust her back.  
  
************  
  
She managed to stay focused for the rest of the meeting but Sloane didn't mention anything further about insertion into Savanov's network. But as she got up to leave, thankful to be getting out of the stuffy room with its inadequate ventilation, she felt the unwelcome pressure of Sloane's hand on her shoulder.  
  
"Sydney, Mr Sark - if you could stay for a minute?"  
  
Dixon raised an eyebrow in mild enquiry and her Dad flashed her a concerned glance. She gave them both an almost imperceptible shrug - no, she had no clue what he wanted, and settled back into her uncomfortable chair. God - after this she was so going to go for a run.  
  
Sark watched her from across the room, lounging in his own chair like a great cat, all limbs and feline languor. She was restless again; he could see it in the minute shifts of her body, the nervous tuck of the hair behind the ears, the slight frown between her elegant brows. He noted each twitch and categorised it, placing it neatly in its file for future playback. Just one of his own little games, categorisation of a possible enemy or asset. Sydneywatching he called it when he was feeling frivolous.  
  
Just now she was in Sydney State B - twitchy. He was still covertly watching her when Sloane started his brief.  
  
"Sovanov has recently been in contact with these two figures." Photographs of a man and a woman, both dark haired, flashed up on the screen. "Elena and Ruslan Baranov. Ex-KGB, both recipients of the KGB version of Project Christmas. Paramilitary types with expertise in a variety of sub-specialisations.  
  
"Currently we have reason to believe that Sovanov intends to establish these two as his permanent emissaries in order to extend further into the Middle Eastern market.  
  
Sark raised an eyebrow in curousity. "A Khasinau situation then? A disguise to conceal himself behind his agents?"  
  
"Essentially. Although an interesting development is that in order to establish intermediaries than he believes he can trust he has arranged to go completely outside his own organisation. And hence - these two." Sloane gestured to the screen. "And a valuable opportunity for us."  
  
Warehouse - South Central LA  
  
"..so Sloane has this idea that if we can infiltrate Sovanov's organisation, we can turn the information gained into a huge strategic advantage. And of course the fact that Sovanov is also reputed to hold a large private collection of Rimbaldi artefacts might explain why he's so eager to move in." Vaughn turned his head to follow her as she paced restlessly in front of him.  
  
"He may have a point." He held up his hands defensively as she glared at him. "Sovanov has been increasing his power base in the Urals for the last four to five years. But this is the first time he's tried to move out of his home region." He stuck his hands into his pockets. "Information on his operatives and organisations could be invaluable."  
  
She glared at him for a moment more and then her face softened. "Maybe. But I still don't like where this is going. He had Stark and I in that room for an hour today. Going over these two independent operatives."  
  
"The Baranovs, right?"  
  
"Mhhmm. Giving us intel on their likes, dislikes, past history, family background, all that stuff. "  
  
"So? He briefs you on contacts every day."  
  
"Yes, but normally he gives us a mission as well. This time it was just information. Lots and lots of information."  
  
"So?"  
  
"I just get the feeling that there is something he's not telling us. Like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop."  
  
"Well, it wouldn't be the first time."  
  
She flashed him a rueful smile. "You're right. If I got upset every time Sloane lied to me."  
  
He smiled at her gently, ".you'd never be cheerful. Anyway I'm sure you'll find out soon enough."  
  
"Yeah. Goodnight Vaughn."  
  
"Night Sydney."  
  
*************  
  
For hours after my Dad's little bombshell I had elected to remain curled up on my favourite window seat, staring out at the gardens but not really seeing them. After a period of time my cat Arthur had joined me, loudly complaining about inconsiderate individuals that evaded their petting obligations. I gave in to him absentmindedly, the feel of the plush fur soothing beneath my hand.  
  
I didn't know what to think. I mean the fact that my Dad had secrets was something I'd always known and accepted. He'd always been scrupulous about admitting there were things that he considered me too young to know. And as I got older that list grew shorter. I knew my Father. I knew all about the assassinations, the Machiavellian tendencies, and the absolute anal need for control. I was the daughter of a man who believed fundamentally that morality was flexible according to the needs of the moment. The only two things I had always believed he held an absolute allegiance to were the safety of the country we lived in and me. And the only reason the first was there was due to some very clever men in SIS who had decided that it was infinitely better to have my Dad on their side. In exchange he had given them a level of loyalty which I knew had before only belonged to me.  
  
But now it turned out that someone else had had that loyalty before me. And that someone was a woman named Irina Dereverko.  
  
***********  
  
Vaughn had been shaving when the agitated message from Sydney came through on his voicemail. With a curse and a frown at the breach in protocol he lunged for the phone, but it was too late, she was gone.  
  
By the time he got to the warehouse she was pacing back and forth like a woman possessed, heels clacking on the floor with the force of her fury. He hurried to her side.  
  
"Sydney - what's wrong?"  
  
She glared up at him, the normally wide and expressive eyes narrowed and blazing. "You said it was probably nothing! Nothing!" she stopped dead in her tracks. "A really big nothing!"  
  
He reached out to take her by the shoulders.  
  
"Syd, you're not making any sense. Now what's nothing?"  
  
She focused on his face and visibly pulled herself together.  
  
"Remember the Baranov's?"  
  
He nodded in affirmation. "Yeah, the Russian freelance couple from the briefing. So what?"  
  
"Sloane", she almost spat the name, "wants me to consider going deep cover and posing as Elena Baranov."  
  
"And?" And then he remembered - Elena Baranov didn't come singly. Instead she was part of a pair. A husband and wife pair. Husband and wife. And it couldn't be Dixon - he was too dark to pass. Oh no.  
  
She nodded in grim satisfaction as she saw comprehension pass across his face. "Yes. And guess who my darling hubby to be is?"  
  
They looked at each other in mutual disgust as the same name floated foremost in both their minds.  
  
Sark.  
  
************  
  
He was still waiting patiently for me when I pulled myself out of my self imposed exile. I leaned against the doorframe to his study, watching him work, the sunlight hitting the fair hair, now threaded with strands of silver. This was one of my constants, so many times I had stumbled out of bed in the middle of the night and made my way to this room, to spend the rest of the night asleep on his lap or on the couch nearby while he worked on until dawn.  
  
He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers, waiting for me to make the first move. I did, crossing the room and curling into a chair opposite from him. For a moment we just looked at each other. It was at times like this that I could see the resemblance between us most strongly. It was there in the shape of the face, the cheekbones, the jut of the chin, even in the identical cynical lift of the eyebrows. He constantly said I looked like my mother, but never having even seen a picture of her, I naturally couldn't see the resemblance. To me it was clear that I was my father's daughter. We be of one blood, thou and I.  
  
He smiled lopsidedly at me and threw me an opening.  
  
"I'll bite. What's on your mind bear cub?"  
  
I shifted further in my chair, drawing my feet up to my chest and drew a deep breath. "Dad, I know you've already let me into a lot of stuff, but I need to know more." He waited silently for me to finish.  
  
"I need," I glanced uncertainly at him, but his face was as blank as ever, his "business face" as he called it.  
  
"I need to know.. Dad, please tell me about my mother."  
  
*************  
  
Sydney crouched against the wall, hidden behind the oil drum, gun at the ready. Across the alley Sark was poised in a similar position in the shadows; gun carefully blacked so no betraying gleam would be seen. They tensed as the door opened once again and the guard slipped out, looking furtively up and down the darkened street before lighting up his cigarette. Sydney mentally wrinkled her nose in disgust. Amateur. That little burst of flame was like a bull's-eye to anyone with proper training. And Sark never had been one to waste an opportunity. There was a snick and before her eyes the guard fell boneless to the floor. She nodded to Sark, no, to Ruslan, and moved out, securing the open door while he worked to further disable the cameras. After all they didn't want to announce their arrival. Without a further sound from either of them they moved further into the complex, already working together like a well oiled machine.  
  
But it hadn't always been that easy.  
  
8 weeks earlier  
  
"You want me to do what?!" Sydney almost screamed at him, before remembering where she was. It didn't do to scream at your boss even when he couldn't fire you. She bit her lip to get herself under control. God, two outbursts in as many days. She was really going to have to get a better control of her temper. She shut her eyes for a second to maintain her composure and then determinedly faced front.  
  
Kendall smiled in ironic amusement as his top double agent struggled to contain her shock at his suggestion.  
  
"I'm sorry, Sir. But can I just point out that what you've just suggested sounds completely insane."  
  
He raised an eyebrow. "Agent Bristow, let me remind you that the CIA is not in the habit of giving out Assistant Directorships to those who are mentally ill. And if you looked at this scenario logically, rather than emotionally, you would see that it has a number of advantages towards our ultimate goal."  
  
She flushed at the reproof and looked at her hands, folded neatly in her lap, the only sign of her tension the change in colour over the knuckles. She was very aware of the bulk of her father to her left, present but as of yet silent throughout the meeting. "I'm sorry Sir." God she was repeating herself now. "I'm just finding it a little hard to assess this scenario objectively."  
  
"With the history you have with Mr Sark that's understandable. However your father and I both believe that your participation in this operation could lead to the downfall of Sloane and the Alliance. And also the removal from the international scene of a credible threat to US security."  
  
She looked from one to the other of them, puzzled. What were the two old foxes up to now?  
  
*****************  
  
8 weeks later  
  
Cautiously she slid along the corridor, gesturing Sark on with her gun, covering him as he inched around a corner. She had to admit, as much as she loathed him personally, professionally he complemented her perfectly. He knew what she was about to do almost before she did herself. And surprisingly she found it was mutual. When they weren't actively trying to be at odds with each other they made a very efficient team.  
  
*****************  
  
The warehouse - LA - 8 weeks earlier.  
  
"I can understand Kendall's reasoning, but yours? Have you just decided it would be better not to have me around?"  
  
She was hurt and it showed. Kendall could at least claim objectivity when it came to her placement, but her Father? Didn't he want her around? Didn't he want to know she was okay? Some of her hurt must have shown on her face, for Jack Bristow put out a hesitant hand to briefly touch her shoulder.  
  
"This isn't about what I want, Sydney. You know if I had what I want you would be out of the game right now." She ducked her head to acknowledge the truth of that remark, embarrassed to meet his eyes. "It's about what is safe and about the best option for you." She looked up, surprised. That was the last reason she would have expected him to give.  
  
"Sydney, if you keep operating under his nose as you are doing, sooner or later, and probably sooner, Sloane is going to peg you as a mole. You're good at covering yourself, but everyone's luck runs out eventually, and despite what you may sometimes think, Sloane is anything but stupid."  
  
"But how does that."  
  
"Shush. Let me finish. This posting will allow you to legitimately gain access to and destroy the organisation of an avowed enemy of the US, while still successfully maintaining the integrity of your cover with SD-6. So essentially, you will still be working for both SD-6 and the CIA while you are working for Sovanov. And if you succeed your trustworthiness to Sloane will be set in stone."  
  
"But, it's two years." She sounded childlike, even to herself and his face softened slightly.  
  
"I know, but it's two years out from under Sloane's eye. And it might be for the best."  
  
"And with Sark." She almost pouted and he grimaced faintly in agreement.  
  
"That's true. And without Will, or Francie, or myself."  
  
Or Vaughn, floated unspoken between them.  
  
"Which is why only you can make the decision. On this one, with this period of time at stake, even Sloane won't force you into it."  
  
She sighed in resignation at the truth of his statement.  
  
"Why don't we get some food and you can sleep on it. You don't have to make your decision tonight." But it was evident to both of them that it had to be soon.  
  
******************  
  
For Sydney it was a very long, sleepless night. Could she do this? Should she do this? Could she work with Sark for that period of time? Wouldn't she kill him? She chewed her lip glumly. She probably would at least try, undoubtedly within the first week. And her Dad, and Will and Francie! How would she cope without them? And Vaughn... Vaughn. Not that they were likely to actually do anything even if she stayed. Ever since Weiss had been shot he had been reserved. Cool. Professional. Ever so slightly distant. And all the burning warmth of her feelings for him had begun to die just a little, like any fire will when there is a lack of fuel. She still loved him, still wanted him passionately but every time he looked away from her it hurt a little more.  
  
Suddenly all she wanted was for life to be simple. Not to have to deal with a tangled web of complicated alliances every time she woke up, with love and duty, desire and friendship, obligation and responsibility wrapping her up so tightly that sometimes she felt she couldn't breath. She just needed something concrete, something to focus on to the exclusion to all else, something simple for once in her ridiculously complicated life, where the only choices were straightforward and her only lies were to strangers. She hugged her knees into her chest, wrapping the old tatty quilt around her feet in the darkness. Maybe this was a blessing in disguise, a chance to just leave these complications and start again. Perhaps Noah had had the right idea when he left her. Break your life down to the most basic components and it simplified things wonderfully. Kill or be killed, live or die. And never have to lie everyday to those that you loved.  
  
SD-6 headquarters  
  
Sydney knocked firmly on the glass door to Sloane's office, her stomach curling in knots. At his murmured "Come," she slipped inside and closed the door firmly behind her, meeting the slightly surprised gazes of Sloane and Sark and her father. Sloane cleared his throat before speaking.  
  
"Sydney, what can we do for you?"  
  
She locked eyes with her Dad for a second before taking a deep breath and fixing her gaze on Sloane, firmly ignoring Sark. God knows she would see enough of him in the near future.  
  
Sloane looked back at her, obviously waiting for her to get to the point. She took another deep breath to quell her stomach.  
  
"I'd like to take you up on your offer. I'll be Elena Baranov."  
  
******************  
  
There it was. The last door. With a roll to shoot the last guard and the quick deployment of C4 against the steel they were in, ready to shoot, taking out the door guards inside the room with casual ease. The object of their attention was huddled against the far corner, gun pointing steadily at Sark, the only sign of his nerves the sweat rolling down his brow. She shifted and his head flicked around as if he hadn't noticed her before and tracked her movement with his gun.  
  
She glanced over at Sark for confirmation and when he nodded uncocked her gun, showing the dart pellets that had taken the place of real bullets, dropping them on the floor. Sovanov looked at the two of them in complete confusion.  
  
"What - who are you people? What do you want?" His Russian was elegant and strongly accented, but his voice was rough with fear and confusion. Sark strolled forward, leaving his sidearm holstered, the only weapon his also unloaded dart gun. The underground lighting gleamed on his newly chestnut hair. He replied in the same language, his Russian fluid and idiomatic.  
  
"Who are we? Well that's easy to answer. We are the Baranov's. That is my lovely wife Elena, and I am Ruslan." He gave a small bow and strolled a little nearer as the other man cowered back slightly.  
  
"And what do we want?" Sark shrugged and released a dazzling smile. "I thought the issue was what you wanted? I believe you were trying to contact us to offer us a job? Well, consider this the interview." He gestured around at the destroyed bunker, the smoke and the downed guards, and Sydney had to bite her lip very hard not to laugh at the expression of complete incredulity on Sovanov's face. That was one thing you had to say about Sark. He certainly had a sense of humour.  
  
******************  
  
She was running and running, but she couldn't get away and bit by bit they gained on her, until she was dodging, diving, jack-rabbiting, as they drew down on her, shots ricocheting off the floor. And then she tripped over something soft, something that gave beneath her frantically moving feet, as she fell in a cascade of limbs and hair and they caught her. And as they dragged her away all she could see was the carcase she had fallen over, a mangled, bloody wreck of a human body - and it had Vaughn's tortured face.  
  
She woke up screaming.  
  
Sark woke instantly, one hand reaching for the gun strapped to the headboard, the other ready to strike. But within seconds he had identified both the source of the sound and the likely reason for it. Nightmare. Not that he didn't have his own, but he was better at keeping them quiet.  
  
She was sitting bolt upright next to him, chest heaving, eyes glazed with panic, panting like a trapped animal. Cautiously he put down the gun and reached out to touch her shoulder, always wary of reflexes as hair triggered as his own. She stiffened, then started to struggle a little as he took her firmly by the shoulders, facing him and shook her gently to pull her out of it. He couldn't afford to have her crack up now.  
  
"Sydney. Sydney! Wake up. It's over."  
  
Her forehead crinkled in confusion as she regained her awareness, scanning the darkened walls of the hotel room without recognition before coming back to focus on him, some glimmer of self sneaking back in. He gave her another little shake and full consciousness flooded in, leaving her bleary eyed and rumpled, but awake.  
  
"Sark? What happened? Why are." She looked suddenly, instantly wary, and he had to hold back a smile at the speed of the change from sleep to suspicion. That was his girl.  
  
"You had a nightmare. You were screaming."  
  
"I did? I was? I don't remember.." Her voice trailed off as she reached up to rub her forehead in confusion. "I was running, I think."  
  
He gave a wry smile. "Not surprising, considering how much time we spend doing that."  
  
She ignored him, still focused on trying to capture the details.  
  
"And then I tripped over something. And it was, it was," her shoulders stiffened as she remembered exactly what, or who it had been. Her lifeline. The one man she had always felt she could trust. Dead. Talk about symbolic.  
  
Sark was still watching her with that steady, assessing gaze, looking as though he was just waiting for her to fly off the handle. Normally it would have just irritated her. Everything about him normally irritated her. But tonight she just felt drained. Drained and tired and absolutely without resources. It had hit her over the last few days how totally alone she was in this situation, no back up, no family, no friends. No trust. No one but this stranger, an enigma who wouldn't even tell her his name. She swallowed frantically over the lump in her throat. She was not going to cry, she was not going to cry.  
  
Sark caught the tell tale signals, the slightest quiver of her bottom lip, the hitch in her breath and mentally shook his head. She didn't do well in situations where she had no emotional support structure and he had watched analytically as she had started to crumble and frantically attempted to shore up her defences, over and over again throughout the last three months. He couldn't afford for her to break apart. For one thing Irina would never forgive him, and for another.well he didn't want to analyse that too closely just now. But first he had to fix this situation as best as he could. He gave her another gentle shake to focus her attention, noting clinically the mask of self control she was trying vainly to hold onto.  
  
"Sydney, let it go. You need to let it go. Remember, they mentioned this in the briefings."  
  
And they had. Sudden bouts of melancholy and depression due to forcible uprooting from familiar structures. Tension that would expression itself in emotion. She was a textbook case.  
  
"I need you to be able to function. I want you to let this go."  
  
She glared up at him mutinously; the shimmer of unshed tears visible in the moonlight. Sark went to tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear and stopped halfway, putting his hand back on her shoulder awkwardly. He sighed.  
  
"I know you don't trust me. I know you don't like me. But if we want to stay alive and sane for the next 20 months you are going to have to let me in. Just a little. So as your partner I want you to let this go. Understood?"  
  
She meant to pull away, to disagree, but suddenly she couldn't hold it any longer and the tears started to flood, silently and against her will as she tried to stem them with the back of her hand like a child. He sighed and pulled her closer, ignoring the stiffening of her body, pulling her into his chest, the solid beat of his heart infinitely comforting, infinitely human and close after the enforced isolation of the last three months. And as she continued to cry he pulled her down onto the bed, wrapping his arms around her, pulling the bedclothes around them both, until she finally fell asleep, with the beat of his heart and an almost inaudible voice muttering comfort in her ears.  
  
********* 3 months earlier - LA  
  
"You have to do what?!"  
  
Sydney straightened up from her suitcase and pushed her hair out of her eyes in a resigned gesture. Here it came. She watched as her best friend stalked around the room, hands flying everywhere.  
  
"The Bank needs me to go and set up a subsidiary operation in Khurdistan."  
  
"I heard you the first time. I just didn't believe it! And you couldn't just say no?!" Francie stopped and glared at her. "You know - just say no?"  
  
She sighed. "I couldn't, Francie, really. It was either agree to it or be out the door."  
  
"Then going out the door seems like a really good option! You know, you can quit that job. It doesn't own you." She was really upset now, eyes glimmering with unshed tears and it made Sydney's heart ache to see it. She put her arms around her friend and pulled her into a tight hug.  
  
"It kind of does, you know that. And if I do this they've promised me they'll cut down on my trips abroad afterwards"  
  
Francie huffed through her tears. "Oh, that's really generous, after sending you into the middle of nowhere for two years! Will you be able to come home in the middle at all?"  
  
Syd pulled back to look her friend in the eyes, and shook her head, hating herself as Francie face further crumpled.  
  
"But I can write, and maybe phone - the lines are a bit erratic, but I'm sure the Bank will work that out. And they'll pay all my bills while I'm away."  
  
Francie scowled through her tears. "I don't care about the money! I'll just." her voice almost broke down into a wail, "I'll just miss you so much!"  
  
Syd hugged her closer, burying her head in her shoulder, the tears now starting for both of them. "I know, Sweetie. I know. Me too."  
  
******************  
  
Sometimes she wondered why God had chosen her for this job. But not now. God, no, not now. Sydney felt the adrenaline pump even faster into her muscles as she rounded the corner and dived for cover, Sark a millisecond behind her. Pop, get the bad guy, get up and dive again, on your back, in the air, see the gun, take the gun, take the bad guy, bring him down.. Up again, now she was just behind him, she had his back, as the explosives they had set went off and the entire building shuddered. The ceiling started to come down and she stumbled on debris, a hand steadying and pulling her up, gone before she noticed, and all the time they were still running, in constant motion, no time, no time, no time. At times like this, when everything was shot to hell and life had narrowed down to pure survival and the race to continue living, when she could be what her mother and father had made her, pure speed and pure reaction, dispensing violence and grace with equal facility, god, at times like this she LOVED her job.  
  
They screeched away from the downed complex in a blur of tyres and Sydney grabbed the seat edges in reaction, left over adrenaline still coursing through her system. Now was when she usually got the shakes. She snuck a quick glance at Sark who was driving like a maniac, pale skin flushed and artificially brown hair mussed at all angles and covered with plaster dust. In the heat of an operation she forgot to detest him, forgot how he represented everything she despised. Instead they fitted together like two well greased pieces of machinery, and unlike Vaughn she never felt she had to look out for him. Sark could look out for himself.  
  
She bit her lip to try to regain her equilibrium and noticed Sark had turned his head to glance at her in return. She cocked her head in enquiry as she attempted to disguise the reaction shakes that were suffusing her body. He was grinning. Not just smiling, or smirking like usual, but grinning. An outright, shark tipped grin, edged with things she didn't want to think about, snapping with an almost childlike glee, matching the dance in his eyes. He opened his mouth and she steeled herself for some critique, to the instant task of analysis that Dixon had always required of her. She could concentrate through this. She could.  
  
"So", he drawled, in that annoying English accent of his, "was it good for you too?"  
  
And he grinned again. And as she stared back at him in blank astonishment, a tiny bubble of hysteria bubbled up irrepressibly inside her and sneaked out in a stifled snicker. And when Sark met her snigger with nothing more than another knife edged grin, the chuckle became a flood and she leaned back in her seat and gave herself over to a full blown case of slightly hysterically edged laughter.  
  
And Sark just smiled and turned the radio onto the Beach boys as they careered further and further away from the scene of their latest exploit.  
  
********  
  
All I could do was stare at the envelope I held in my hands. My Dad had given me the packet after dropping bombshell number three on me. First I find out that the circumstances of my birth were less than usual, then that my father used to be the right hand man to one of the world's most feared crime bosses. And now finally that my mother, the woman who I'd always been told, had "had to go away", wasn't in fact dead, as I had so cynically assumed in my early teenage years, but alive and kicking. In this instance "gone away" turned out not to be a euphuism for death, but the real description. She had had to go away, and in exchange my father had been allowed to keep me. I was the price of his collusion and assent to matters he had not seen fit to reveal to me. I was his Faustian temptation: his Devil's Bargain.  
  
*************************  
  
Typically it was right in the middle of a mission that the epiphany happened.  
  
Savanov had the two of them gathering information on arms shipments through central Columbia. Just a simple smash and grab at a very exclusive party. But when she had dressed and presented herself for Sark's - Ruslan's inspection he had looked unconvinced.  
  
"What?" She twirled round in front of him, the slight bias in the skirt causing it to flare out around her legs. He frowned. "Something's missing."  
  
"What?" She checked herself over. "I can tell you it's not my gun. And I don't think anything else would even fit under this dress."  
  
"It's this." He reached out to a side table and handed her a flat parcel. She eyed it dubiously. What was he up to?  
  
"Happy Birthday Elena."  
  
Her eyes widened comically as she finally took in the significance of the date.  
  
"Ruslan!" She took the parcel and pulled off the wrapping, Sydney watching suspiciously from behind Elena's eyes. Sometimes she really hated working in bugged hotel rooms.  
  
It was a soft velvet topped box. A jewellery box. She raised an eyebrow at him in enquiry, but he simply waited, blank faced. With a slight shrug she opened the lid - and gasped.  
  
It was a Tiffany's necklace, a form fitting choker created from swirls of elegantly branched platinum and studded with diamonds. In the dim light of the hotel room it glittered and sparkled like a piece of the rainbow come down to earth.  
  
She opened her mouth to protest the extravagance of the gift and he put a finger over her lips, rolling his eyes in the direction of the listening devices. "Sshh Elena. Can't a man buy his wife a present on her birthday?"  
  
She shut her eyes in momentary frustration. "Of course Ruslan. It just surprised me, that's all. It must have been very expensive."  
  
"It was nothing. I wanted to get you something that shone just like you. Now why don't you let me put it on."  
  
He took the box from her unresisting hands and slid the necklace around the slender column of her throat. Still unsettled by this development Sydney assisted by lifting the mass of her hair as he slid the necklace into place. It was a close fit and his fingers were warm and steady against the back of her neck, brushing against the hairs there as he deftly worked the catch. She was suddenly very aware of him, standing there, the almost animal heat of his body through the immaculate tuxedo, worn with that particular relaxation that was positively feline, the small puffs of his breath against her neck as he leaned in to fasten the clasp, the surety of his touch against her skin. He settled the choker more firmly against her, his fingers brushing up against her nape and she shuddered, the spasm running down her skin and glowing at the base of her spine.  
  
He stilled, fingers tightening momentarily, and then moved away, hands glancing over the edges of her shoulders as if he couldn't help himself.  
  
Sydney shut her eyes, biting her lip in an attempt to get her traitorous body under control. When she opened them again he was still watching her, something in his eyes that was dark and unpredictable and alluring all at once. Lifting her chin she turned her head and met his gaze head on, while her cheeks coloured and she had to fight the urge to turn away.  
  
Surprisingly he turned away first, moving away into the bathroom, running a hand through his artificially brown hair, breaking the tension. With a mental sigh of relief and worryingly mixed feelings Sydney hurried to get her wrap and the bag they required for this evenings snatch and grab.  
  
*********  
  
In my hands I held the first concrete proof I'd ever seen for the existence of the woman who had given birth to me. I suppose I should have been furious, distraught, raging, but really all I felt was a burning curiosity. Who was this woman, and how could she have been persuaded to give me up? And why when my father talked about her did his face lose all its animation and his eyes close down? Was she the reason that no girlfriend lasted beyond a few dates and the demands of the body? I had always smugly assumed that it was his overwhelming attachment to me that had prevented him from forming another relationship, but perhaps it had been someone different all along. I opened the envelope, spilling pictures of a brunette beauty onto my lap. Perhaps it had been this woman all the time. This woman, Sydney Bristow. My mother.  
  
**********  
  
Her job had few benefits and numerous disadvantages, but what it did have in spades was surreal moments. And this was certainly one of them. She leaned against Sark as they danced, both of them seemingly caught up in the moment, but in reality keeping a close eye on their respective areas of the ballroom. Around them swirled the glittering throng, dressed to the nines in silk and taffeta, diamonds and rubies sparkling, the majority of the men decades older than their partners. No one paid any attention to the young couple on the dance floor, judging them oblivious to anything except each other and consequently no threat.  
  
In fact Sydney was having trouble concentrating on the mission herself.  
  
The feel of Sark's shoulder under her cheek was distracting, but the burning warmth of his hand as it slid over her exposed back was almost maddening. Despite all her best intentions her mind kept veering abruptly off course, distracted by the scent of his skin, the pressure of his fingers, the warmth of his breath as he leaned down to rub his face against the mass of her hair. It was as if all her nerve endings had fired up all at once.  
  
Sark breathed in sharply, inhaling the scent of her hair, like something green just broken. Five months now and this was the most relaxed she had ever been. When he had first agreed to this assignment he had little motivation beyond the furthering of his and Irina's operation, that and getting himself out of from under Sloane's eye for a while. But he had to admit his interest had been piqued at the idea of spending so much time with the lovely Sydney Bristow. She was after all, one of his favourite specimens for analysis. He was curious to see how she did under continuous pressure, what her weak points were, if the outer strength masked a hidden fragility. After all wasn't it always said that a wise man kept his friends close but his enemies closer? But then Irina had passed down a command from on high. He was to watch her daughter for her, support her, do whatever was required to keep her stable. And with that the game switched to a completely different level. Firstly he now had proof that Sydney Bristow had value to the woman he had believed cared for no one. Human weakness. A vulnerability. And secondly, he was reminded that this slender young woman was actually her mother's daughter. Irina's Deverko's child. And Jack Bristow's - altogether a formidable pedigree. Perhaps she could genuinely be useful, genuinely be a piece in play. And with that motivation his focus had shifted from clinical to self motivated, and he actually started to actively reach the woman who hid behind the mask of Elena Baranov.  
  
And he had discovered how devastating fire and fragility could be together in one slender package.  
  
These days he had a far greater respect for Jack Bristow. If Sydney was anything like her mother the man had never stood a chance. The idea of all that fire and passion actively engaged in seduction was faintly scary, like sitting on top of a volcano and waiting for it to go off. They all treated her like something fragile, too delicate to touch, as if she might break, but he could see beyond that to the wildness and fury underneath, the grace in motion and the dark parts of her that delighted in the violence and destruction. And unlike the others he knew he could always reach her there, for the dark areas of her soul were warped mirrors of his own.  
  
Carefully he tracked around the ballroom, scanning for the target. Seeing no sign of Senor Gomez's incipient arrival he allowed himself to indulge in the moment, brushing his cheek down the side of her neck and pressing his lips for the briefest of instants to the graceful line of her exposed collarbone. She shuddered almost imperceptibly against him and he smiled just above her skin. So he was getting to her. Finally.  
  
The touch of Sark's lips on her skin almost destroyed what was left of her composure, and she couldn't prevent the shudder that momentarily racked her frame. She was completely conflicted. It had always been easy to despise him, safe in the comfort of labelling him the enemy, purely evil, the opposite in every way of the man she truly wanted. But, as she had discovered over the last five months, things were seldom as black and white as that.  
  
Sark was amoral, expedient, a killer. All these things were true. However he was also thoughtful, intelligent, a genuine connoisseur of art and fine wine and unpredictable in a number of ways. For example, small children seemed to like him, something which would have been an almost Darwinian argument against their continued survival, except for the fact that he repaid their trust with the nearest thing to gentleness she had ever seen him show, hunkering down to their level and talking to them as adults. She had seen him ruthlessly torture an informant and the next day pick up a fallen child from the street. Like the man himself his actions were often an enigma.  
  
And in the five months they had been working together he had never once attempted to touch her in any way that could be called aggressive. He watched, but recently even that felt more like concern than analysis. And when they worked together he was unfailingly professional and supportive. In only 5 months she had already lost count of the number of times he had come through for her. Although in their profession life and death situations were almost normal, she had enough honesty to admit to herself that if he hadn't kept his half of the bargain on numerous occasions she wouldn't be dancing here now. In his arms.  
  
She bit back that thought, scanning the ballroom for Gomez, wishing for once that the target would just hurry up already! With no other outlet her mind started churning again. Admittedly she had saved him as well, but to her that was normal partnership etiquette. In all honestly she had never expected Sark to hold up his side of the bargain. But he had. And more than that he had looked after her in a way Dixon or Vaughn never had. She felt secure in his presence. He made her feel.. She frowned in consideration. Yes, he made her feel.safe. Not that it made any form of logical sense that she would feel safe in the arms of a merciless killer. But her feelings never had been particularly logical. Perhaps it was that part of her that realised that nothing she could do would shock Sark, that all the darkness in her would never cause him to turn away, that had responded so strongly to him. He could see all of her and not wince. Vaughn now. She thought she could love Vaughn so very easily, in all honesty she loved him already, but what she loved most about him was his gentleness, the fact that little darkness lurked inside him. She felt drawn to his goodness, his light, like a moth to a flame. But she knew that she would always have to keep some part of herself from him. She would always have secrets from the man she loved. In this she was truly her Mother's daughter. And Sark.Sark would need no secrets. Nothing in her would be distasteful to him. They were alike in that if nothing else. And he was strong. Strong enough so that for once she could lean on him, rather than always being the one that others leaned upon.  
  
But even if it was true, how could she ever balance being with Sark with the other parts of her life? She sighed, leaning her head on his shoulder. Maybe she should just accept things as they were now. For the next 19 months she would be with him 24/7. Perhaps it would be enough; maybe she could take a time out from everyone's expectations and demands and just live for herself for a change.  
  
Sark almost stopped dancing when he felt her sigh and the pressure of her head on his shoulder. But thankfully his feet were on autopilot so she didn't notice his momentary lapse. What was this? Was it capitulation? Was she finally letting him in? Well whatever it was he had never been a man to let an opportunity slip by. With that in mind he slipped his arms more securely around her, pulling her into his chest, acknowledging the shiver that passed over both their skins when his hand grazed the bare skin of her back. With an inaudible growl of frustration he brushed his lips over her hair and maintained their vigil for the appearance of the illusive Senor Gomez.  
  
He had always wanted her, right from when he had first heard of the rumour of her existence. The child of Irina Derevko, the one woman to whom he had sworn his loyalty. What a trophy to have, what a prize. And then when he had seen her, singing in that ridiculous cabaret, holding Khasinau hostage with her gaze, rolling them all with sheer bravado, well when he had made the connection between the almost legendary Sydney Bristow and the kick ass chanteuse, he had been momentarily speechless in admiration. And with that want changed to something harder, more concrete and less abstract. And every time they met, or fought, or exchanged barbed words that want had solidified further. But until this job, and his orders from on high, that want had been the desire of a child to possess something or maybe to take it and break it. To remake something to please himself.  
  
But now.he shifted again, touching the very edges of her skin, shivering in response to the shudder that wracked her frame. He wanted her. All of her. Not the façade that he could create with enough brutality and pressure, or the shallow mask of a woman that she showed to strangers. No, he wanted all of her, the bundle of contradictions, desires and delicate fire that made up Sydney Bristow.  
  
And so in a strange way he had set out to woo her. In some ways it reminded him of trying to tame squirrels when he had been a boy. Contrary to what people might have expected, he liked animals. Animals and children. Neither had any real choice in who they were involved with and so he afforded them latitude he would never have extended to adults. After all, he did not consider himself to be a sociopath; rather he was a man who had formed his own personal and moral code from the circumstances and opportunities that had been extended to him. And so now, rather than breaking Sydney, as he could have done so easily, he was using his memories of taming wild things to slowly work his way inside her barriers.  
  
He knew that any violent act towards her would send her retreating so fast he would never get close again. So instead, it was all going to have to be her. She would have to instigate, to come to him willingly. Only then could he be assured of really having her. And as a falconer he once knew had said, the proof of his hold over her would be in the freeing. For if you let a wild thing go, and it returned to you of its own free will, no matter how long it took, then it would be yours forever.  
  
In the meantime he would watch, and wait and use all of his considerable self control not to just take her. Which at certain times was easier than others.  
  
Now was certainly not one of those times. He closed his eyes momentarily as she shifted in his arms, one hand rested on his chest, closed around the lapel of his tux., the other curling around his shoulder. God, this was one of those times when she drove him nuts. Then she shifted again, with real purpose this time and he tensed as she whispered in his ear.  
  
"Gomez at 6 o'clock, Ruslan." And with that reminder Sark flicked once more into mission mode. Feelings could wait, this was work.  
  
******* 5 months earlier  
  
"You're doing what!"  
  
Syd tucked a strand of hair and glared at him.  
  
"Keep your voice down!" she hissed. "Francie might hear you!"  
  
Will was pacing up and down in front of her, running his hands through his hair distractedly.  
  
"I can't believe you agreed to this." He shot her a glance. "And with him!"  
  
She met him glare for glare. "I didn't really have much choice in the matter."  
  
Which although not technically true, was essentially correct. A "suggestion" from Sloane was seldom ignored. For a second they matched identical glares, hurt and irritation obvious on both sides. Then he stopped pacing and sighed, all the fight draining out of him.  
  
"I'm sorry. You're right. It's not as if you probably really had any choice. I suppose when both SD-6 AND the CIA say, jump - the only thing you can really do is ask how high."  
  
"Something like that, yeah." She looked down at the rug. She really hated lying to him, but if he knew she had volunteered there was no way he would be so understanding. He moved towards her, pulling her into a tight embrace and she responded, wrapping her arms around him gratefully. Her ever dependable Will. He sighed into her hair.  
  
"But you watch your back with Sark, Syd. Don't ever make the mistake of trusting him. He's a scumbag."  
  
She burrowed deeper into his comforting embrace. "I know. I won't. I promise."  
  
"I'll worry about you every day, you know that, right?" His voice was worried and not quite steady as he embraced her.  
  
And as she buried her worries and fears in his arms for a minute, she allowed herself to bask in the warmth of his affection. At least she would always have that, no matter how far she travelled.  
  
*******  
  
They stumbled together along the corridor, pretending to be more than slightly drunk, conscious of the eyes of the guards. The bag with the stolen manuscript was tucked between them. It had been the work of moments to break into the safe, once Sydney had danced with Gomez to gain the necessary items to fool the fingerprint and voice recognition scans. She still felt faintly dirty, as if Gomez's oily touch had left its mark on her skin, and she really wanted a shower. Now if they could just get out of here undetected.  
  
Of course, that was easier said than done.  
  
******************  
  
She was tall and slender, with hair the colour of the very best mink. Her eyes were chocolate brown and I suddenly understood what my Dad meant when he said I looked just like her. The colouring was identical, the same pale skin, the aquiline shape of the eyes. I reached up to touch my face hesitantly - I had her nose. Physically we had the same build. She was a dancer, or a runner, built long and slim, with a swan like neck.  
  
In the early photos she seemed self contained, serious. In later ones there was the occasional break in the storm clouds, the edge of a smile, but never a full one, as though she would shatter if she relaxed too far. She looked permanently on edge, as if something had stripped all the ease out of her years ago. I traced the edges of her face with my finger. I was a fundamentally optimistic person, in sharp contrast to my father's jaundiced view of life. I had always thought I had inherited that from my mother. But after seeing these photos I really wasn't sure any more. What had happened to her? Who broke her and why?  
  
******************  
  
The alarm had gone off just as they were nearing the exit. Quick as thought Sydney pulled them both into an alcove of the hallway, hiding them from the guards who poured out the entrances like water. They were pressed against each other and the wall, the alcove only really big enough for one. Sydney felt the steady rise and fall of his chest as he leaned against her, his back to the hall, shielding her while giving a pretty good imitation of ravaging her neck with his mouth. She shut her eyes and went along with the façade, biting her lip back on an all too realistic moan as his lips seemingly accidentally grazed behind her ear. Thankfully their little show seemed to convince the guards.  
  
As soon as the initial rush had passed they went to work, removing the manuscript from the bag and slipping it under Sark's shirt. Then they bundled themselves back into the corridor, Elena laughing and falling over slightly, obviously drunk, waving a champagne bottle, as her long suffering husband steadied her and raised an amused eyebrow at the guards.  
  
For Sydney it was one of the longest evenings of her life. For two endless hours she and Sark danced, nibbled and flirted their way through the party, ignoring the scanning guards, as Gomez, visibly agitated, surreptiously watched his guests. They knew that he would never dare to admit to losing as valuable a piece as the manuscript, especially not from his own house. And any overt search or announcement to this bunch of piranha's masquerading as guests would be considered weakness - blood in the water. So the only thing Gomez could do was watch for atypical behaviour and hope that the thief would make a mistake that would make his or her identity obvious.  
  
So Elena and Ruslan Baranov danced and flirted, and seemed oblivious, smiling until their faces ached, before making their exit with the majority of the crowd.  
  
**************************  
  
I took copies of all of the photos back to my flat with me. I had given the originals back to my Dad and he had taken them carefully from my hand, as though they were unbearably precious. That he had cared for her was plain to me, even if to others he would have seemed expressionless. But did he still? I was still musing on that and other things as I kissed the top of his head and left to go back to London and Uni.  
  
When I reached my flat I huddled down into the coach, feet in ancient socks tucked up underneath me, vintage Ramstein t-shirt pulled down over my knees. I studied each photo with obsessive fascination, desperate to find an iota of meaning in the grainy images in front of me. I was still deep in concentration when a sudden blast of tuneless singing and the slam of the front door broke my train of thought. Sitting back I smiled as a green haired, highly pierced vision bounced into my field of vision and halted her singing to enquire:  
  
"Hey 'Lena. What's up with the world today?"  
  
Fiona Hartley-Barton was my flatmate, technically Lady Fiona, Mensa level intelligent, addicted to hard core 1970's punk music and a highly competent hacker. She was also my best friend and had been since we were 14 and at boarding school together. And at times like this a computer geek was a truly useful friend to have. True - I could have pulled in a few of my father's contacts, (don't look so surprised, after all I AM his daughter) but if I didn't want him to know I had to keep it within the family. And Fee was the closest thing I would ever have to a sister.  
  
I gestured her over.  
  
"You know how I always said my mother was dead?" She cocked her head at me, an oddly birdlike gesture, and nodded sharply.  
  
"Well, it seems that I wasn't technically correct."  
  
"Holy shit. Really?" Swearwords always sounded out of place in her cut glass accent. She bounded over the side of the couch and landed heavily on the cushions, peering in fascination at the photos on my lap. "Are those her?"  
  
"Yup. And Fee - " I looked at her imploringly, "I really need your help on this one."  
  
She pulled me in to a rough hug.  
  
"Whatever you need, sweetie. Whatever you need."  
  
And with that I settled down to explain to my best mate the plan that had been fermenting in my mind since my Dad had dropped his latest bombshell.  
  
************************  
  
They had spent the ride back to the hotel in silence, continuing the charade in the bugged room, murmuring endearments to each other in the way of married couples, while never quite meeting each others eyes. And when they piled into the double bed together, acres of space separating them, all Sydney could think of was the man who was sleeping so close, but in reality was as far away as the North Pole.  
  
And those thoughts felt strangely like betrayal.  
  
5 months ago - the warehouse - LA  
  
This was the last one. She would see her father once or twice during the operation, at one of the 6 monthly debriefings that Sloane had set up, but none of the others. And even though it was hard to say goodbye to her friends, at least she had the reassurance that they would be beneath the notice of anyone who wanted to kill her. In fact her moving away almost guaranteed their safety, a thought she took out of storage and wrapped around herself whenever she felt in need of reassurance. But after this meeting she wouldn't see Michael Vaughn for two long years.  
  
And it hurt.  
  
She had been wobbly even before he arrived at the warehouse, and the sight of him stalking across the floor to meet her hadn't helped. He had noticed, his forehead furrowed in characteristic anxiety, but had remained strictly professional. They discussed the mission like it was any other 3 day jaunt, talking about variables, emphasising again her counter mission for the CIA. But they both knew it was just talk. And eventually they ran out of things to say.  
  
Syd glanced up at him. He was staring at the floor, forehead creased, giving off such a palatable feeling of worry that it made her heart clench just a little. She didn't want to say anything, didn't want to end the meeting because then that really would be the end. And she didn't know if she could bear it.  
  
He broke the silence first. "I'll keep an eye on Will and Francie if you want."  
  
She sighed and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'd like that. Thanks"  
  
She shot a quick glance at him. "Will you be changing assignments?"  
  
"Not really. I'll still be your handler, just on.suspended..duty. I'll still work the SD-6 detail; maybe help out your Dad. I'll just have to wait until you get back before I can go back to operations."  
  
His "wait until you get back" hung on the air between them, igniting feelings that she had thought were dying.  
  
"I'm glad. I mean that you'll still be here when I get back." It came out in a rush and she found herself blushing slightly in vexation. Glancing up she saw he was watching her, his eyes warm and speaking for the first time in months, and she blushed some more.  
  
"I promise, Sydney. I'll be waiting."  
  
She smiled at him shyly, suddenly uncomfortable with such a loaded conversation. "I know. I'll try to make it back in one piece."  
  
He took a step nearer, his hands burrowed in his pockets as though he was trying not to reach out to her.  
  
"I'll hold you to that. And don't trust Sark. That piece of slime always has a hidden agenda." His open face was screwed up in distaste at even mentioning Sydney's new "husband".  
  
"I won't. And look after yourself Vaughn. I want you here when I get back."  
  
He smiled slightly and suddenly leaned down to brush a kiss on the side of her cheek. For a second they held the position, the heat from their skins suddenly and painfully erotic. Then he backed away, breaking the tension, keeping his distance. His eyes were burning with all the things he would not allow himself to say. I miss you already; I need you to be safe. I love you. But all he said was: "Be safe. I'll see you soon."  
  
"Me too". She watched as he made his way out of the building, watched until even the echo of his footsteps had died away. And all the time she could feel the burning imprint of his kiss on her cheek. It had been meant to be affection, she recognised, but it had felt like abandonment.  
  
***********************  
  
It had been three days since they returned from their latest mission, three days of trying not to acknowledge the new thing that appeared between them, as if by pretending it wasn't there they could somehow erase its presence. Yeah, right. It was like trying to ignore the famous pink elephant shitting in the middle of the living room. They were cautiously, carefully polite to each other, and spent as much time as possible in separate rooms.  
  
When Sovanov phoned them with another mission they jumped on it with mutual sighs of relief.  
  
************************* Fee had spent the last ten hours trying to track down one Bristow, Sydney, last address, date of birth etc, all entirely unknown. I had spent the last ten hours keeping her primed with junk food and extremely strong coffee, familiar with her requirements from years spent rooming together at school. I had finally dropped off to sleep on the couch for a few hours when she finished, only to be woken up by the pressure of a heavy body landing firmly on the cushions beside me. She groaned and I cracked open one eyelid in response.  
  
"Any luck?"  
  
She was rubbing her forehead with the backs of her hands, always a bad sign.  
  
"Man, your Mum is a ghost. You do know that right?"  
  
I sat up, all my feelings of giddy anticipation quickly draining away. "So, nothing?"  
  
"Nothing. Nada, nyet, etc, etc. I've looked everywhere, Sweetie, and she just doesn't exist."  
  
"So that's it then." I slumped into the cushions, abruptly deflated. Fee eyed me with concern and struggled to sit up straighter.  
  
"No, no. We just have to go after it from another direction. Now what information do we have?"  
  
"Well, we know she was Caucasian, going by the photos, mid to late twenties."  
  
"Maybe a little older. Let's make that up to mid thirties."  
  
"Sure. Also that she is brunette, has brown eyes."  
  
"Both easy to change."  
  
"True. And that she had some connection to an international mercenary leader my Dad used to work for, named Irina Derevko."  
  
"Hah. Now that last I can use." She stood up and started cracking her stiff fingers in anticipation. "Even if Derevko is no longer active we should probably be able to pull a file off Interpol. And if we can get known associates it might help." She shot me a quick concerned glance. "Your Dad doesn't know we're doing this, does he?" "No." I answered softly. It was the truth, he might have suspected I would do something similar, but he didn't actually know. The look of anxiety faded from her face and she breathed out in relief.  
  
"Good one too." She shuddered. "I mean, your Dad, El? Very scary. Seriously cute. But scary."  
  
I just smiled.  
  
****************************  
  
Syd stretched her arms above her head, desperately trying to get some relief into aching muscles. Although she loved the adrenaline and fast pace of her life sometime it wore her down. And this was one of those times.  
  
They had been on the run now for 72 hours, picking off their pursuers one by one, unable to go back to base until the last of them was gone. And the forced, although strategic retreat was wearing. She glanced over at Sark, who was maintaining this hour's watch. There had been too many of these in the last month, missions that led to extended time on the run. They both needed some down time. But it had helped to crystallise one thing for her. She finally trusted Sark.  
  
She had accepted that for the moment he had a vested interest in keeping her alive. Not that he would explain why, but actions such as pulling her out of a hail of bullets and charging into fire fights to pick her up tended to speak for themselves.  
  
She studied the side of his profile intently, noticing the smudges of dirt on the pale skin, the slight shadows of fatigue under the eyes. He felt her scrutiny and turned momentarily, raising an enquiring eyebrow. She answered him with a small shake of the head; it's nothing, and a sincere smile that surprised them both. With a quirk of his lips in response he turned back to the watch. And she realised, with a strange sense of inner clarity, that if she had to choose to be stuck in this situation with anyone, there were far worse people for her than Sark.  
  
****************************  
  
Fee's fingers were speeding over the keys like a woman possessed, the Clash blaring angrily in the background. And under the music I could just about make out a muttered monotone of curses and comments as she worked to defeat the firewalls in her way. She loved a challenge. We both bunked school for the day and focused our combined energies on the problem. It was like trying to track a ghost in the machine. Traces of elusive identity slipped past us, throwing out tantalising feelers, but always leading to dead ends. Possibilities fell through our nets, but offered potentialities that we traced furiously. It was the world's biggest scavenger hunt and we were ferocious in its pursuit.  
  
It was after 16.00 when Fee's suddenly triumphant yell disturbed my focus. I had been wracking my brains for something my Dad used to say when I was a little girl, before my recall had become totally reliable. Something about the Beach Boys and my mother.. I looked up in half feigned annoyance only to find my partner in crime doing the samba solo around the living room.  
  
"What?"  
  
"I've got it!" She quickstepped triumphantly.  
  
"Got what?"  
  
"The clue, sweetie! The fucking clue! I've found her!"  
  
"Who? My Mother?"  
  
She shook her head vehemently. "Uh huh. The next best thing."  
  
I looked at her in bewilderment and she shook her head in disgust at my stupidity.  
  
"Irina Derevko, Babee!!"  
  
Oh yeah. Now we were smoking.  
  
*****************  
  
She woke to find she had crashed on the couch and Sark had covered her with a blanket.  
  
The last trek back had been a blur of days spent hiding and fighting, punctuated with grabbed moments of sleep and the blurry passing of scenery she paid no attention to. Like animals on the trail they had reduced themselves down to the basics of sleep, eat, hunt, and Syd had ceased to really take notice of anything outside the mission, immediate threats and Sark. With everything else constantly in flux her body and mind had learned to fixate on the one thing that seemed a constant presence. But now, finally, they were back at base and to her faint embarrassment she had fallen asleep within minutes of getting through the door. She hadn't even made it to her bedroom.  
  
She pushed back the blanket and sat up, stretching the kinks out of reluctant limbs. It was dim in the living room, with a bite of chill in the air, the fire glowing dully in the grate. She must have slept for hours as it had been mid afternoon when they returned, and now the stars were gleaming outside in the fall twilight. October was settling with a vengeance and unlike California this country had definite seasons. With a shiver she pulled the blanket around her shoulders and padded through the house, suddenly starving and aware of the ground in dirt that she hadn't been able to wash off over the last few days.  
  
The house was bare and quiet as always, embossed with little of either of their personalities, but peaceful for all that, and she slipped into the shower with a sigh of pure gratitude, soaping up and washing down, luxuriating in the pure bliss of being clean again. Shower first, then food. With that in mind she slipped into her robe and headed for the kitchen.  
  
She had left the lights off and the only other illumination in the hall was the soft amber of a lamp showing under the open door to Sark's room. Suddenly filled with a strangely childlike need for reassurance she paused in front of his door. She hesitated on the doorstep, battling with conflicting urges. One demanded she check to see if that one familiar presence she had come to rely on was still present. The other, however, was warning her of the consequences of moving into an unknown situation. She felt like a heroine in a fairytale, with the possibility of Bluebeard's wives in the room before her.  
  
It was ridiculous.  
  
With a sudden burst of irritation at her foolishness she pushed the door ajar and glanced in the room.  
  
He was curled up on top of the great double bed, face burrowed into the pillows, chestnut hair catching the light. He had obviously fallen asleep almost as fast as she had as his boots and socks were strewn haphazardly across the floor. He had shucked his sweater as well and as she watched he shivered unconsciously in the draft, goose bumps rising on his bare arms below his t-shirt. There was something strangely vulnerable about him, one bare foot tucked in under his knee, his whole posture seeking to maximise warmth despite his having fallen asleep on top of the covers instead of under them.  
  
Syd hovered, undecided for a moment, and then shrugged mentally. One good turn deserved another. She picked up a spare blanket from the chair, padded over to the bed and covered him gently. He shifted and she froze momentarily, looking down at him, his face relaxed, but still closed off even in sleep. There was a lock of hair falling over his cheek, and with the hair softening his profile he had never seemed less like the arrogant stereotypical bastard who had so tormented her for so long at SD-6. Instead he was just Sark. Complicated, complex and contradictory. Focused and brilliant in the game, but still by no means the one-dimensional killer caricature that she had created in her mind. No bogeyman here. Just a man. And with that thought she leaned down and brushed the barest of kisses over his cheek, just the touch of lips to skin. And then froze as she realised a pair of ice blue eyes were staring into hers from just an inch away.  
  
***************  
  
It only took another five hours to track down Irina Derevko, rumours of her presence floating through the files of global law enforcement. Slowly and painfully we traced her back, Fee sweating buckets as she speed hacked, totally illegally, into numerous databases normal people didn't even know existed. Using all the memories of every conversation of my Dad's I had ever overheard, every scam and trick his official and unofficial network had taught me, I gave her leads and she stormed down them like a tornado, blowing aside all barriers in her way. God, we made a great team. And all this illegal activity was a rush, I had to admit. Maybe I could blame genetics. And then suddenly - wham. There she was, in glorious Technicolor. The two of us hunkered down over the screen. Irina Derevko. Ex-head of a major network. Whereabouts currently unknown. Captured by the CIA in the early 00's, disappeared from sight a few months later. Associates include Andrew Sark.  
  
"Wow - your Dad certainly has interesting friends."  
  
I gave her a dirty look and kept on reading.  
  
Known aliases: Bristow, Laura. Bristow, Laura? Was she related somehow to Sydney? And then as I kept staring at the screen, trying to out the pieces together, I realised something I'd been trying very hard to ignore. She looked like me. Unfortunately Fee got it just about the same time. "Lena, she really looks like you!"  
  
Could this woman be my Grandmother? If so it was official - I was going to kill my Dad.  
  
**************** Time seemed to stand still for a minute as they stared at each other, neither willing to break the standoff. Her vision seemed to have narrowed until all she could see were ice blue eyes and she suddenly found herself inexplicably unable to move.  
  
Sark kept absolutely still, only too aware of the battle being fought behind those brown eyes so close to his. He had woken as she entered the room but had maintained the pretence of sleep, curious to see what she would do. But he had been taken aback when she covered him with a blanket, and even more so when she bent down to kiss his cheek. A sudden fire of hope and desire had burst into life when she touched him, and he knew if he didn't at least try to seize the moment he would always regret it. So he opened his eyes.  
  
She didn't seem to be able to move. The sudden paralysis was dimly worrying but she hardly noticed, concentrated on the more major battle between common sense and desire. Part of her was screaming retreat, remembering every warning, every incident, all the disapproving faces of those she loved. And the other part was seeing the man before her, so patiently waiting for her decision. Letting her choose.  
  
Sark  
  
And suddenly it didn't seem such a hard decision after all.  
  
He saw it in her eyes the minute she made her decision, those deep pools of peat water glittering with all things unsaid. Almost holding his breath he dared to lift a hand to her face, ready to take it back if she flinched, running his fingers over skin as soft as velvet, feeling his body jolt abruptly into life. God he wanted her.  
  
His fingers trailed across her skin, down her cheekbone, the edges of her chin, leaving her face tingling its wake. Blindly she turned her face into his palm, pressed her lips into the centre of his hand, nuzzling closer. The breath went out of him in a long gasp and she felt the murmured caress of her name.  
  
"Sydney.."  
  
He sat up, cupped her face in both his hands, every sense alert and keening. He wanted to drown in her eyes, fill his hands with her breasts, savour everything. He was suddenly, painfully hard.  
  
His hands were cupping her face and he was there, he was kissing her, gentle at first, skirting the edges of her lips, butterfly and sweet and then pressing for entrance which she gave willingly, tongues duelling with each other. His mouth was so sweet and she was drowning, drugged beyond all hope of redemption as he pulled her closer, down onto the bed, legs tangling, her robe slipping upwards, baring her thigh.  
  
God so much skin, sweet and honey scented and Sark didn't know where to touch first, what to taste, it was all his. She was his at last. And God, had the wait been worth it.  
  
She gasped as he kissed his way down her neck, kneading his shoulders with her nails, one hand buried in his chestnut hair. He was everywhere. She felt a change in temperature as he undid the belt on her robe and she stiffened at being exposed so absolutely.  
  
God she was so beautiful, every line, every curve, all that skin. Sark took her in greedily, the long, lean legs, the full breasts, the curved musculature, the slight flare of her hips, and the delicate curve of her waist. He ran a caressing hand across the flat curve of her belly and felt an infinitesimal tensing of her body. He pulled away and met her eyes, noting the edge of anxiety, the stiffening in her frame. Carefully he pulled her robe over her again and put a hand to her face.  
  
"Sydney - do you want this?"  
  
He watched, stroking her skin, until the hesitation was replaced by determination, and desire flared up hotter to scorch both of them as she rolled into him, hooked a bare leg around his calf, pulling him closer.  
  
"Yes, I want this. I want you, Sark."  
  
And the rest was silence interspersed with gasps and moans and the slick sounds of flesh against flesh. Gasps when her mouth met his skin, moans when he mouthed her breasts, suckled her nipples, buried his face between her thighs. Her nails scored his back and he relished the small pain, even as she guided him inside her, and oh, she was so tight, like warm velvet, and he couldn't last much longer. And when she spasmed around him, calling out his name, he couldn't last at all.  
  
Is this was what it took to love Sydney Bristow he wasn't too sure he would survive the experience. And strangely that thought didn't bother him at all.  
  
**************  
  
"So, where do we go from here?"  
  
The two of us had spent the last twenty minutes dumb foundedly reading my new found grandmother's file. Was there anything this woman hadn't been involved in? No wonder she had my genius Dad's loyalty. 'Cause if you had to work for someone of dubious morals it was always better to go for the very best..I shook my head in disgust at my wool gathering, chewing frantically on my drinking straw. It was a bad habit I'd had since childhood.  
  
But hey, at least I could now blame the genetic bent if I ever turned properly to crime. With my Dad, and now my maternal Grandmother, and probably my Mum. I wondered absently what my Mum's Dad did, but dismissed the thought. Time for that when we had tracked her down.  
  
I looked up at Fee, who was still patiently awaiting my answer to her question.  
  
"Well, it says here that she disappeared from confirmed records in 2004, but prior to that there was a period of custody at CIA. Might be the logical place to look next. At least they will have better files."  
  
"Yeah." She cracked her fingers in anticipation. "You know, 'Lena, it's a good thing that all this info is almost twenty years old, or even I wouldn't have a hope in hell in cracking these databases. And the CIA? Hell - girl you set me challenges."  
  
I grinned at her. "But you love it."  
  
She smirked back. "That I do. Got the Red Bull?" I waved a pack at her in confirmation.  
  
"Right, then let's get to it."  
  
**************  
  
Thinking back on it later, it was strange how little awkwardness there had been between them when they finally woke up. Instead it simply seemed to cement something that been developing slowly over time. For Sydney it had boiled down to a very simple equation. In this place, at this time, she trusted him absolutely. Outside this bubble her life had become there was a world of moral ambiguities and complications that she resolutely managed not to think about. But inside the bubble there was just her and Sark, and surprisingly she discovered she didn't need anyone else. He completed her. And day by day, week by week the barriers slowly fell down until he had worked his way inside to everything she was.  
  
For Sark it was a wild sort of freedom. Freedom to have her, to feast on her until he was satisfied, even finally the freedom to trust someone other than himself. And even though he couldn't admit it even to himself he loved her. So instead he simply delighted in her, all that unleashed passion, the wildness and whiteness of the smile that flashed increasingly at him as he divested her of the constant weight of her double life. He taught her to rejoice in the game the way he did, for the pure joy of it. Because fundamentally Sark was a player, the intricate webbing of alliances and double crosses only a way to keep score. And Sydney was a worthy piece on the chessboard, Queen to his King.  
  
And in the forced isolation and the constant security of each others company they formed a bond that was nearly unbreakable.  
  
*************  
  
"'Lena."  
  
"Urghh." I had been having a rather fascinating dream, something to do with fish that talked and was really reluctant to be woken up. The voice came again and this time it was accompanied by a hand that attempted to shake my shoulder. It didn't quite get there.  
  
I came fully awake to find myself sitting bolt upright in the bed, holding Fee's hand rigidly at arms length. She was staring blearily down at me in an aggravated fashion which changed to resigned as I released her wrist in embarrassment. "Thank you." She glared at me, rubbing her wrist. "You know 'Lena, someday those reflexes of yours are going to hurt someone."  
  
I shrugged, still faintly embarrassed. My freaky reaction time had been a school joke ever since one of the prefects had tried to remove my Discman from behind and I had knocked her senseless without turning round. I had been 14 at the time, and the humiliation of the subsequent dressing down had helped to cement Fee and I into our present solid relationship. My Dad typically had thought it was hysterical. But he did have a warped sense of humour. "Sorry." I rubbed my head in a vain attempt to focus and sat up. "So what have we got?"  
  
It was 4am and we had now been on this ghost track for almost 24 hours, spelling each other over the last eight hours where we could. I may not have been Fee, but I could usually hold my own on the Net, especially if she gave me a path to travel. "I've just about ready to breach the last firewall but when we do all hell is going to break loose."  
  
"Right. So what do you need me to do?"  
  
"I'm going to bounce us off about twenty different countries and 12 satellites. It should confuse them enough for us to get out without being tracked. But we'll still only have about 45 seconds. So I hope the areas we scouted out earlier are the right ones."  
  
"Or what?"  
  
"Or the next place you and I will be going will be at her Majesty's Pleasure." I grimaced. It seemed it was impossible for anyone with Bristow blood to keep out of the way of the authorities. And with Dad's genetics as well I was doubly cursed.  
  
*********** "Sydney, are you alright?" Sloane frowned as she paced back and forth in front of him. He noticed, however that she never once stopped tracking the exits, seeing the vantage points, checking for cover. That was his good little Jenny Bond. But he also noticed how she never paced in front of Sark, never left his back unguarded even for a moment, never allowed her restless trajectory to interfere with his line of sight, but constantly paced around him, as if there was an invisible rope holding the two of them together. He had never seen her so visibly hair triggered, so ready to fight and the worrying thing was he had the impression that what he was seeing was her normal readiness level these days. And Sark just lounged in his chair, totally comfortable with the fact that Sydney was guarding his back, visibly relaxed that she was there, not a muscle twitching. Sloane looked from one to the other again. It seemed some things were going a bit too well. He wasn't too sure what he thought about this particular development.  
  
"Sydney. Please sit down." It was a very thinly veiled order.  
  
She glanced at the offered chair for a moment and then shook her head slightly, continuing her pacing like a tiger in a cage. Sloane sighed in frustration. Sometimes she was irritatingly like her father. And that dammed pacing was getting distracting. Sark caught his look and straightened from his slouch. "Elen..Sydney. Won't you have a seat? It's okay here." Sloane could see it, how Sark's voice somehow had so much more weight than his, his thinly veiled command taken as a request. Her dark eyes flashed to him, questioning, and he answered her silently, dipping his chin to the other iron bound chair. The corner of her mouth twitched and she pulled the seat out from the table, positioning it slightly to his back and diagonally to the side. As she did so Sloane saw Sark reach out to touch the back of her hand, unwinding some unspoken tension, and she relaxed, the breath coming out of her in a long exhalation.  
  
However Sloane noted that she still had Sark's back, and that she could still see all the exits. And as the two of them looked back at him with identical focused, assessing eyes he was reminded of tigers he had once seen in India. Predators both. And certainly not the Sydney Bristow he remembered.  
  
********* "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! 'Lena - please never ask me to do anything like that again!"  
  
"No fear", I vowed fervently. The last 10 minutes had been truly scary and not something I wanted to repeat any time soon. But we had what we needed. All the files on one Irina Deverko, nee Laura Bristow. I downloaded them before anything else could go wrong and printed them off just in case, my hands snatching greedily at the pages as they piled out of the printer.  
  
"Have you got what you needed?"  
  
I pulled myself out of the fugue my mind was threatening to spiral into in order to throw a grateful arm around my best mate and hug her tight.  
  
"It's the gold mine sweetheart. It's the bloody mother lode."  
  
"Excellent. Well, much as I would love to find all about your Mum, I'm sure she'll wait for my perusal until tomorrow. I am crashing. Don't wake me up unless."  
  
".the Clash reform or the world ends. Yeah, I know. Get some sleep. And thanks. Fee - you really have no idea. Thanks so much."  
  
She ducked her head, smiling, slightly embarrassed by my gushing and sloped off to her room, tactfully leaving me alone with the first independent proof I had seen for the existence of a mother I had long believed to be dead.  
  
*********  
  
They were lying twined together in bed, Sark amusing himself by winding his fingers through the mass of her toffee coloured hair. He could do this for hours. Sydney supposed she shouldn't have been surprised that he was such a sensualist, after all the love of fine wine, the black suits and fine fabrics should have pointed her in the right direction, but still. She stretched, cat like and almost purred as he stroked her into submission. She was definitely reaping the benefits. It was more than faintly erotic to be constantly the focus of all that directed intensive attention.  
  
Seeing Sloane again had disturbed her, shaking the calm tranquillity of the bubble she had constructed about both of them and she had fixed on her partner's solid presence like a drowning woman, conflicted between wanting to smash Sloane's arrogant face in and the urge to run as far away as possible and never come back. When they had finally made it back to base she had been unwontedly aggressive, seizing Sark just inside the door, pushing him against the wall, ravaging his mouth, desperate to erase the oiliness of the stain on her soul Sloane seemed to leave behind. Sark had responded with a surprised enthusiasm and she had drowned herself in him, using his body to wash away the memories of Sloane. And now she was basking in the aftermath, body loose limbed and relaxed.  
  
Sark was quietly indulging himself by kissing up the edges of her collarbone when she turned abruptly in his arms. Her dark eyes caught the lamplight and sparked at him as she studied him such focus that he smiled a little, amused by her perusal.  
  
"Sark - what's your first name?"  
  
He buried his face in her hair, still smiling. She smelled of strawberries.  
  
"Why do you want to know?" He was teasing her now and she could tell, the high forehead faintly creased in vexation. She propped herself up on her elbow and frowned down at him as he smiled lazily back at her. There it went, another mood passing over her face like clouds over the sun. To him her constant mood swings were easy to read, but to others she seemed indefinable, elusive. She was quicksilver, was his woman. His woman. His hand momentarily paused on its path down her shoulder as he savoured the truth of that mental appellation.  
  
"Andrew." Very few knew that name.  
  
Her face lit up like a child's and she covered his face with kisses while he laughingly tried to fend her off before pulling her into a deeper embrace. And some part of him that had been closed off for so many years opened just a little further. Andrew. He could be Andrew for her.  
  
********* 


	2. Chapter 2

I had a name, records, details, and more to the point I had an old address for one Sydney Bristow. As I had said to Fee, this time we had truly hit pay dirt.  
  
I fed the address into the California DMV. Unsurprisingly it was no longer current, but a quick search gave me a new address for one Bristow, S, in San Diego, CA.  
  
I sat and read Fee's downloaded files for hours before crashing on the coach, brain spinning and eyes glazed. The woman who was my grandmother made Machiavelli look innocent. If I was to believe this dossier she had a finger in every pie, from arms trading to amateur archaeology. And who was this Rambaldi geezer anyway? But I was far more interested in the small traces of my Mother's life that twinned in and out of the documentation, teasingly hinting at before petering off to nothing. I learned that my maternal grandfather Jonathon Bristow, had also worked for the CIA, and that Irina Derevko, posing as an American college student, had been married to him for 7 years. Also that she was ex-KGB. The bullets just kept on coming.  
  
But there was little mention of my mother initially, bar a notation that Laura and Jonathon Bristow, had one child, a girl: Sydney.  
  
I was sickened by the deaths my grandmother had caused, but not surprised. My Dad may have kept me sheltered, but he never kept me stupid, and I had been aware of the world and its darker elements from a very early age. His philosophy had always been forewarned is forearmed, and from an early age I had associated and been introduced to a very wide range of people with an interesting variety of skills. Indeed the one woman my father trusted as my nanny was an ex-MI6 agent. And I lost the few illusions I had been allowed to keep when I was 11 and someone took a try at my Dad at the house during the night. That ended with the intruder's dead body on the living room floor, but his blood and brains splattered all over my face. After that and my subsequent nightmares my Dad beefed up security considerably. But I didn't go to therapy. I was a Sark, and therapy was for wimps. Instead he got me another martial arts trainer and added knife work to my already extensive curriculum. After a few months of gutting an imaginary opponent the nightmares diminished. I was a very practically orientated little girl.  
  
That older part of the file finished abruptly with the reporting of Laura Bristow's "death". But when I moved onto the period dating from around 2002 it became suddenly more interesting.  
  
Irina Derevko had been an unheralded walk in to the CIA in 2002, but had insisted she be debriefed only by Sydney Bristow, confirmed to be her daughter. The dry facts left tantalising hints, and without the video and audio files I was left frustrated and almost physically champing at the bit. I would have loved to have seen the dynamics of an interview between mother and daughter. After that there were mentions of more debriefings, a mission that all three Bristows had gone on, various snippets, and then nothing. The file just stopped. Just the bare notation that the Irina Derevko file was henceforth suspended. What had happened? Where had she gone? Was she still imprisoned by the CIA? And what had happened to my Mother in the meantime? It was clear that she was working for the CIA at the time, but I had been born in 2004 and there was no mention of my Dad anywhere in Irina Derevko's file. And he had been, by his own admission her right hand up until my birth. How had my Mum met my Dad? Why was I here?  
  
I felt like the bastardised offspring of some fucked up version of Romeo and Juliet. Where did I go from here? I knew I would never be able to get on with life until I had some answers and I had hit rock bottom with this avenue. And much as he loved me I knew my Dad would never talk about it. It was a taboo subject for him. So that really only left one option. I had to go to the source.  
  
I had to go and visit my Mother.  
  
*********  
  
It was still dark outside and the only illumination came from the dim glow of the alarm clock on the bedside table. Sark was still wrapped around her like a comfort blanket, although she sometimes wondered who was comforting who. Whatever little she had learned about Andrew Sark in the last 10 months, it was clear by omission that his childhood certainly hadn't been all puppies and roses. Not that he would ever talk about it. Some barriers were still as high as ever.  
  
She eased herself out of his arms, careful not to disturb him, as she crossed the room to the bathroom. He stirred faintly as she switched on the light, the illumination spilling from behind the door highlighting his face and causing him to turn on his side and bury his face under the pillows before falling back into sleep. That at least had changed. As little as a few months ago he would have woken up at any movement, but now he trusted her to watch his back. That at least was solid between them.  
  
She closed the door behind her and dug out the package where she had hidden it earlier and sat down to read the instructions.  
  
The requisite 3 minutes later she was sitting on the toilet seat in a state of shock. Pink. It wasn't meant to be pink. She'd been careful. Didn't this mean it couldn't be pink? She shook the wand frantically, but it stayed defiantly pink. Baby pink.  
  
Baby. She was pregnant. She couldn't be pregnant. Not now. Not ever. She had never even thought about being pregnant since Danny. And with Sark's child?  
  
She had felt a little sick on their last mission, but had put it down to a dodgy Chinese, like the one that had made her sick the month before. She bit her lip as it all made sense. Dodgy Chinese, being sick, being on the Pill. A bad combination all round, and Lady Luck had just rolled the dice against her.  
  
She tentatively put her hand on her stomach. She was pregnant. And with the child of the man sleeping next door. And she didn't know what he would feel, or think, or even to be honest what she felt or thought about it. All she knew was the thought that there might be life somewhere inside her, that she might be able to produce something that wasn't connected with death and pain, gave her a strange wobbly feeling deep inside.  
  
She sat and stared at the wand for another few minutes until the colour slowly faded from the little window. Then she methodically destroyed all traces of her little experiment and flushed the remnants down the toilet. As she slipped back into bed and Sark's arm automatically came out to snuggle her closer all she could think about was the possibility of a child, a smiling child, a laughing boy with fair hair, and burning hazel eyes, playing in the sunlight. Sark's child. Her child. What was she going to do?  
  
*********************  
  
Of course the minute I actually realised what I had to do all my motivation to actually do it went out of the window. It had all seemed so easy until I actually took the time to consider what it would mean. I didn't know this woman. She didn't know me. And I was just meant to appear on her doorstep and chirpily announce, "Hi - I'm your long lost daughter! Remember me?" Not a cunning plan. I shifted uncomfortably on the couch. But at this rate it might be my only option. I rubbed my eyes. 24 hours on the go and a life altering decision didn't go well together. I would sleep on it. Maybe when I was thinking properly another solution would become apparent.  
  
The next thing I knew there were streamers of bright sunlight leaking through the blinds and Fee was bashing on my bedroom door. I pulled myself up from another bizarre dream about talking fish (what was it with me and fish these days anyway?) and groggily sat up in bed, trying to pull my hair into some semblance of order. I had horrible morning mouth, and god I needed a coffee.  
  
"What?" I screamed, or tried to scream. It came out more of a croak.  
  
"'Lena - get up!"  
  
I scowled at the closed door.  
  
"Do I disturb your sleep? Bugger off!"  
  
The door creaked open and Fee's frantically screwed up face peered around the edge.  
  
"'Lena, you have to get up NOW!"  
  
I wasn't convinced.  
  
"Why?"  
  
Her face screwed up even more and she made a jerky head motion towards the living room.  
  
"Your Dad's here. And he looks serious."  
  
That got me up.  
  
*********************  
  
Syd spent the next week in a state of complete distraction. She could tell that Sark noticed, but unexpectedly tolerant he didn't mention it. Although every so often she did catch him watching her, forehead creased in concern. But he had obviously decided to let her handle her own concerns in her own way.  
  
Any other time she would have appreciated that, but now she felt like she was wearing a big sign on her head that screamed "conflicted!" and all she really wanted was for him to sit her down and demand the truth. But he didn't and so she spent the rest of the week getting more and more confused and anxious.  
  
For Sark it was a strange week. Syd had started out distracted, quickly descended into absentminded and went downwards from there. Every night she snuggled into him desperately like he was the last solid thing on earth, but during the day her expression was often so far away he wondered if she even heard what he said. It wasn't until he caught her completely mistranslating the plans for their latest mission that he realised he was going to have to find out what was bothering her, if only for their personal safety. If she was distracted on the mission she might get both of them killed.  
  
He automatically considered several convoluted approaches, and eventually decided that in this case, the direct attack might just work best.  
  
"Sydney." Syd looked up, startled. She had been so far away in thought she hadn't even heard him come in the room. He was leaning against the door jamb, black sweater and combat trousers almost blending into the shadows. She smiled faintly. He did so love black. Assassin chic, she called it.  
  
"Hhmm?"  
  
"Syd, I think we have to talk."  
  
At his words her mind immediately went into overtime. Talk - had he found out? Did he know? He couldn't have. But then if not - what did he need to talk about? For Sark it was almost dizzying watching every emotion flood across her face in quick time. She looked scared. That concerned him. In every mission they had done together, whether as partners or rivals he had yet to see her afraid. But now at a few words from him she was terrified. Abruptly he abandoned his plan and crossed over to crouch in front of her, taking her hands in his. Her hands were like ice and he frowned in concern, rubbing them with his warm ones to heat them. When he looked up she was staring down at him like he had come to arrange her execution. Something was definitely wrong.  
  
"Syd, I don't want to pressure you, but I'm not blind. Something's wrong. What is it?"  
  
All she could think of as she looked down into his blue eyes was escape. Fight or flight, just what her body knew best. But she knew she couldn't run away from this, no matter how much she wanted to. But how to say it - what to do? Undecided she pulled her hands from his and got up to pace, needing to move, while he took her place on the couch, watching her with keen eyed attention. She didn't even know how to start. She couldn't ever remember being this scared. But waiting didn't make it any easier. So she turned to face him.  
  
"Sar.Andrew - do you ever think about family?"  
  
He frowned, puzzled. Where was she going with this?  
  
"Yes..."  
  
"Do you remember what it's like to be in one?"  
  
Now he was truly confused. But she was obviously trying to say something so he decided to humour her.  
  
"I wasn't born fully grown, Syd," he commented in his driest tones. She knew he didn't like to speak about his parents. She blushed and shook her head in frustration.  
  
"What I mean to say is - have you ever wanted to part of one?"  
  
Perhaps she was missing her Father and her friends. Although what that had to do with this he couldn't fathom. Women were an enigma wrapped in a mystery and this one more than most. "I can't say I've really thought about it much. Why?"  
  
She crossed over and kneeled in front of him, unconsciously mirroring the position he had taken a few minutes before, putting her hands on his knees. Her brown eyes were wide and very earnest.  
  
"I think you might have to think about it soon." He cocked an eyebrow in confusion. What on earth was she talking about? And then it dawned on him.  
  
For Syd it was like watching a dam break. She had never believed she would ever see the impenetrable Sark genuinely caught off guard. A small internal part of her did cartwheels in jubilation, while the rest of her quailed in reaction. He grasped at her hands convulsively and she bit her lips not to flinch at the sudden pressure. For a minute they sat, both frozen in time, and then Sark took a deep breath and centred himself. He slipped a hand free and put it to her cheek and she immediately turned her face into it, nuzzling at his palm, her eyes closed.  
  
"Syd - are you trying to tell me that you're pregnant?"  
  
She nodded against his palm, her heart too full to speak.  
  
He sat back, pulling her up onto his lap, momentarily flummoxed. She curled up against his chest like a kitten and his arms tightened around her reflexively.  
  
"Right. Just give me a minute, sweetheart. I might have to think about this one for a while."  
  
And curled against his chest Syd nodded her head in definite, frantic agreement. They both had to think about this one for a while.  
  
*********************  
  
I took the time to pull on a pair of jeans and an old sloppy Joe. I loved my Dad and I'd never once been scared of him but it was always strategically a good decision to face him fully armed, so to speak.  
  
He was lounging back on the coach, dressed in his customary black. I used to tease him about it when I was younger. He always deflected my comments with a muttered "assassin chic" and a little half smile that I could never quite figure out. But these days it was just what he always wore, as much as part of him as his skin. My Dad - the perpetual mourner. Fee had brought him a coffee and he was regarding the beverage with the suspicion he normally reserved for large explosives. No Columbian mountain blends for Fee and me. Nope - we lived on Jolt coffee - extra strength. He raised an ironic eyebrow at me as I crossed to drop a kiss on his cheek before curling up in the armchair opposite.  
  
"I pay for an extremely expensive education and then you go and fry your brain with this swill."  
  
I just smirked back as I quickly downed half of my "swill" in a few gulps. The caffeine hit my system like a blast of cold water.  
  
"At least it's legal. Unlike other drugs I could be using."  
  
"True." He regarded me for a moment in silence.  
  
"Elena, I know what you've been doing."  
  
I stiffened, before I made myself relax. He couldn't know, not unless Fee had told him, and I know she never would have. She'd be too scared of his reaction. He must mean something else. I racked my brain to think of any indiscretion that would warrant this visit. But before I could finish the thought his voice broke into my musings.  
  
"No I don't mean anything else, and yes, I do mean your search for your Mother." I just gawped at him. How could he know that?  
  
He shook his head at me in an admonishing gesture.  
  
"Sweetheart, you should have learned by now that I can read everything you're thinking just by watching your face."  
  
I was still gaping at him. Was I truly that transparent?  
  
"Don't worry. It's probably just me. I have had 20 years to study you. But it's a trait you shared - share -with your mother."  
  
I closed my mouth with a snap. Was he actually acknowledging my mother in the present tense? And talking about her without being begged for every scrap of information? Suddenly I had the urge to check for pod people. It was definitely Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  
  
"Twenty years ago I had tags created on the files of 3 individuals in the CIA main database. I'm sure you can work out who they were."  
  
I just nodded silently: Sydney Bristow, Jonathon, or Jack Bristow and Irina Derevko. "Yesterday I received notification that an outside source had hacked into Irina's files" I noticed how he called her Irina. Casually, familiarly, as though the woman wasn't an assassin and murderer. And my grandmother to boot.  
  
"I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when my sources traced the intrusion back to Fiona's computer." His voice was absolutely neutral, and I stared fixedly at the rug, filled with a strange mixture of relief and shame. I didn't even hear him move, but the next minute there were firm fingers pulling up my chin, forcing me to look him straight in the eyes.  
  
"'Lena."  
  
I couldn't look him straight in the face and tried to squirm my chin out from his hold. With a slight shake of his head he firmly tugged my face up again. "'Lena, look at me." He was frowning, small lines creasing on his forehead and I realised suddenly that he looked.tired. And wounded in some way I had never noticed before.  
  
"You are my daughter and I never, ever want you to feel you can't look me in the eyes. Got that?" He gave my chin a small shake. I nodded against his hand.  
  
"I guessed that you wouldn't leave it with the information you have now." There was a new note I couldn't read in his voice. Amused acknowledgment touched with something else. I ducked my head in embarrassment.  
  
"However I must admit I didn't expect you to get to it this quickly." I looked up at him bashfully, taken back by the small smile that played across his mouth for a second before disappearing.  
  
"But you are my daughter, and with the rest of your background being as it is, I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything less." There was that note again. I frowned as I tried to identify what he wasn't saying. And then as I gazed up at him and his hand touched my cheek gently I realised what it was. Pride. He was proud of me. After all the emotion of the last 36 hours it was too much and my bottom lip started to tremble. He ran a caressing hand over my cheek and stood up, pulling an envelope out of his pocket, firmly tucking one of my hands around it. I could still feel the phantom trails of his fingers on my skin, although the warmth was quickly fading. "I can't tell you what you need to know." He tucked his hands into his pockets and looked down at me. "I can't rake up the past like that, bear cub. But I know you need to know." He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my forehead. "Just do one thing for me sweetheart. When all this is finished, promise me you'll come back home." I had to swallow the lump in my throat to answer him and my voice came out thin and thready.  
  
"I promise, Daddy. I'll come home."  
  
He nodded half to himself, reached out to touch my hair affectionately, and left without a further word.  
  
I opened the envelope.  
  
When Fee came in two minutes later she found me in a puddle of tears, curled up in the armchair. Before she could ask what was wrong I waved the contents of the envelope at her. US Dollar travellers' cheques, a platinum visa card in my name.  
  
And two first class round tickets to San Diego, California.  
  
*********************  
  
They had curled up together in their bed, neither willing to start the conversation that they needed to have. Instead they focused on the moment, the rise and fall of breath, and the warmth and steadiness of the other. Eventually Sydney couldn't bear the silence any longer. "Andrew? What are we going to do?"  
  
She rolled onto her back to look at him as he propped himself up on his elbow to regard her. The fire light turned his chest to a mass of angles and shades and her hand twitched to reach out and caress him. She knew every inch of that skin now, all those lines of bone and muscles, had mapped every plane with hands and tongue, but sometimes she still craved the taste of his skin with a passion that was almost reckless. He was her drug of choice and she was addicted.  
  
He took his time in answering, staring at her face as if he was memorising her from the inside out.  
  
"What do you want to do?"  
  
She frowned at him. If she knew what she wanted to do she wouldn't be asking him, would she?  
  
"I don't know."  
  
He looked momentarily frustrated and shook his head in dismissal.  
  
"Sydney, I don't mean what you should do. If you were in an ideal situation and you got pregnant, what would you do?"  
  
She hesitated, torn between conflicting impulses, good sense warring against instinct.  
  
"I." He saw her hesitation and pressed her.  
  
"Would you keep this child? Would you get an abortion?" He leaned in closer, pushing his weight against her, pressurising her. She frowned and tried to wriggle away, but he trapped her wrists with his hands and her body with his weight and held her immobile. "Just answer me right now - would you keep this child?"  
  
She was upset now, not liking the restraint or the pressure. All she wanted to do was run, as had always been her wont. But he wouldn't let her escape.  
  
"I don't know!"  
  
"Do you want this child? Answer me!"  
  
Pushed beyond her comfortable limits she snarled up at him. "Yes - I want this child. But I can't keep it, because it's yours!"  
  
They both froze for a second, acknowledging the uncomfortable truth of her words, regrouping. Syd ceased her resistance and looked at him anxiously. Then Sark pulled back a little, releasing her wrists, curling an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in closer. His face was shuttered and thoughtful. They were silent for a few minutes. "I've been thinking over our situation. It's not ideal, I grant you."  
  
Curled against him, Syd snorted in exasperation at that understatement. "But I believe that if we can work together we can overcome most of the obstacles. We have another 12 months before we are due back at SD-6. More than enough time for the baby to be born and for.arrangements. to be made."  
  
She wasn't too sure if she had just heard what she had thought she'd heard.  
  
Scrambling around in the bed she propped herself up, looking down at Sark, reversing their positions.  
  
"Are you telling me you want this child?" she demanded incredulously. Of all the responses she had expected, this was certainly the least predictable.  
  
He looked up at her, lifting a hand to touch her cheek, his eyes ice blue and unreadable and hesitated before going on.  
  
"Yes. I want this child. I'll respect your decision if you choose otherwise. But for myself - I could think of no one else I'd ever want a child more with."  
  
She stared down at him in blank shock. From Sark, this was more than a proposal of marriage.  
  
"But we can't." She cast around wildly for words to even describe the magnitude of the foolishness of the path they were considering. "The security risks, the protocols."  
  
"Fuck the protocols." His voice was a low growl that sent shivers down her spine. "Why should we never have children like any one else? Why do we have to have no family?" Unspoken it hung on the air - why are we always alone?  
  
"But the hostage risk, my family, SD-6." She was almost hyperventilating and he sat up and took her shoulders firmly, his eyes very intent.  
  
"You once said to me that you felt like we were in a bubble for the duration of this mission, right?" At her uncertain nod he continued.  
  
"We are still in this bubble. We will remain in it for the duration of your pregnancy, even after the birth. Just you and me, Syd. Just us, no one else. No one else matters."  
  
He was giving her a look of almost laser beam intensity. "And once our time is up, I promise, by then I will have things sorted out. I promise you this; if you have this child I will give my life to see that it remains unhurt. I swear this. Do you understand me?"  
  
Caught by the fire in his eyes she could only nod mutely. There was a world of emotion in his face as though a great dam had broken. She felt powerless in the face of the onslaught. And also she wanted this child. Her child, Sark's child, their son or daughter. Her free hand slid down to rest gently on the curve of her stomach and his followed hers, fingers entwining against the soft skin of her abdomen. She swallowed convulsively, trying to speak past the lump in her throat.  
  
"You promise on your life that you'll protect this baby? That whatever happens we can work something out?"  
  
She looked him straight in the eyes, looking for any sign of hesitation and reluctance. But there was none, just blue fire blazing back at her, more passion in him than she had ever seen before.  
  
"I promise. I swear it."  
  
Syd took a deep breath. "Then I'll have this baby. I'll give us a child, Sark" And she was almost bowled over by the force of desire and pride in his eyes as he seized her mouth roughly and pushed her back onto the bed, intent of demonstrating to her by touch all the things he was too crippled to say aloud.  
  
*********************  
  
I had my father's blessing. And frankly, that scared me more than anything else. For the next two days I was completely frozen by indecision, unable to move forwards or backwards. It was Fee who finally took matters into her own hands and catapulted events into motion.  
  
I was sitting watching the TV mindlessly when she abruptly slapped the two tickets down in front of me. When I picked them up I noticed they had been validated for travel in three days. I opened my mouth to protest, but she stopped me with a waggled finger.  
  
"I have been watching you mope around here for the last two days, and since you seem constitutionally incapable of making a decision I've taken it out of your hands. We are flying out of here in three days, you are going to go and see your mother, while I'll go to Seaworld. And then finally perhaps both of us can get on with life as we know it!"  
  
In the face of such righteous indignation all I could do was nod assent.  
  
*********************  
  
All their significant moments seemed to happen at night. Perhaps it was simply the fundamental nature of their relationship. Sark shrugged off the thought and firmly curled his arm around Sydney, hugging her closer to his body. Her hair splayed out in a fan across his chest, the trailing tendrils of it tingling on his nerve endings. Absently he wrapped a piece around his free hand, disturbing and then smoothing the silken texture back into submission. She wasn't completely asleep, he could tell that much, but her body was totally pliant in his arms, trusting.  
  
He was still somewhat awed by that trust, even when he had spent over a year earning it. He rang a light, caressing finger along her shoulder, smiling when she murmured sleepily in response. She was not a woman to do any thing by halves, was Sydney Bristow. Having decided to trust, she trusted absolutely, having decided to love she did so without holding back.  
He fervently hoped he would never have to break that faith.  
  
It had some unexpected joys, being with her. She was loyal beyond reason or thought. In defence of those she considered hers there was no one fiercer, a veritable falcon in the dive. And she was a great cook. Although on the rare occasions they had a chance to cook for themselves they tended to fight for the duty, as Sark considered himself somewhat gifted in that area as well. And behind that well brought up exterior she had a wicked sense of humour.  
  
And when it came to sex the intensity of her passion was almost frightening. For many other men it would have been intimidating, but not for Sark. He had long ago released his inhibition in those areas. It had been said that what was necessary for the authentic experience of life was the confrontation of death, and while he didn't quite subscribe to that philosophy he understood the meaning behind it. Everyday he was alive could be his last, and a consequence he worked to truly live and experience in a way few could match. And so every night she was with him he loved her as though there was no tomorrow. Because for them there might not be.  
  
The firelight was gilding her skin, accents of fox-gold on alabaster, casting accents on her hair, turning it into a nimbus of auburn tinged mink. He leaned down to drop a delicate kiss on her collarbone and she stirred sleepily, turning in his arms, blinking up at him from half opened lashes. The firelight caught the glitter of her eyes under the lids as a little half frown reflectively furrowed her forehead.  
  
"Andrew?" Her murmur was still half conscious, not really coherent as yet. "What's wrong?"  
  
He leaned down and kissed her forehead gently, shifting as she curled up on his chest, taking her hand and entwining their fingers.  
  
"Nothing. Just thinking."  
  
She frowned a little more. "Too late for thinking. You think too much anyway. Go to sleep."  
  
"Soon, leannan."  
  
She smiled sleepily at the endearment, curling even closer, her head over his heart. "Tell me a story."  
  
He closed his eyes for a moment. It was at times like this, in the small hours, when his defences were weakest. And sometimes the smallest thing she did could pierce him to the core. Leannan. Sweetheart. One of the few things he could remember from his mother, before she had been ripped out of his life. And his own response as he went to sleep each night. Tell me a story, Mummy.  
  
He put out a not altogether steady hand to stroke her hair as she sighed in contentment.  
  
"Not a story. My stories aren't bedroom ones, leannan."  
  
She muttered faintly in protest, still more than half asleep. He smiled faintly in response and continued stroking her hair, soothing her back into sleep. But as she fell into unconsciousness she was sure she heard his voice at the edge of awareness, rhythm, pattern and melody blending in to create a hypnotic lull.  
  
For Sark, that night would be one that he held precious for many years to come, this woman who had crept inside his defences in his arms, her body carrying his child, and the firelight blessing them both. And over it all the words of his favourite poet providing the release for all the things he felt too crippled to say.  
  
FASTEN your hair with a golden pin,  
And bind up every wandering tress;  
I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:  
It worked at them, day out, day in,  
Building a sorrowful loveliness  
Out of the battles of old times.  
  
You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,  
And bind up your long hair and sigh;  
And all men's hearts must burn and beat;  
And candle-like foam on the dim sand,  
And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky,  
Live but to light your passing feet.  
  
********************  
  
It was the longest flight of my life. Even with the reassuring presence of Fee beside me, busy guzzling every comfort that first class had to offer. I couldn't sleep, dozens of possible scenarios running through my brain. Would she reject me, try to slam the door in my face, profess ignorance of my existence? Or worse would she simply not see me at all, too caught up in some happy home life she had created, a domestic goddess for the twenty first century. What would she think of me? After all I wasn't exactly dream long lost daughter material. My temper was too sharp and my sense of humour sharper, my body still felt like it was rebelling against my control and hey, I brought all the baggage of being the daughter of a man famous for some very dubious incidents plus her lost lover to boot. Not exactly an easy package to swallow.  
  
*******************  
  
What had been fairly simple now escalated in complexity. Every mission had to be triple planned, every contact double checked, the safety of more than themselves risked with every outing. As her body ripened Syd found her attitudes changing to match. Every time she lay against him in their bed, mapped the peace in his face as he slept with a hand curled against her abdomen her resolve sharpened. This was her time - her mate, her child and by God she would bring them all through to the other side as intact as possible. And every day Sark looked at her and saw the shadow of Irina Derevko run closer to the surface of Sydney Bristow as she focused her whole being on their survival, morality and leniency be damned.  
  
But there were lighter moments too - when Sark managed to get Cherry Garcia ice cream shipped in at exorbitant cost to satisfy her cravings, leading to ridiculous tussles over the spoon and love play that left Ben & Jerry's splashed over the walls. Or when she would create disgusting sandwich combinations that had him gagging and pretending to retch at the smell of her breath. But he always kissed her anyway.  
  
For Sark the whole thing still seemed strangely unreal, as though he would wake and realise one morning that she wasn't there, that it had all been some dream turned nightmare by the emptiness of the bed beside him. So paradoxically as she grew fiercer he grew gentler with her, inwardly terrified that he would wake up one morning and she, and their child, would be gone. And as he grew gentler the ferocity of her caring for him grew, until every mission when she couldn't be beside him was a source of endless tension and concern.  
  
For as her body changed Syd had had to accept a more sedentary role in their missions, acting as his all seeing eyes, calling out the shots from the comparative safety of her snipers position. But he always felt her at his back, connected by more then a spiral of wire, invisible wings of fierce protectiveness blanketing him in a way he hadn't felt since his mother died. And whenever he stumbled her voice was there to show him the right path to take, the right person to kill, the safe way to come back to her and their child in one piece.  
  
And the only thing that shadowed their weird idyllic interlude was the awareness that time was rapidly running out for the both of them.  
  
******************  
  
I fretted all the way through the taxi ride, the plane journey and the limo ride to the five star hotel (my Dad never did anything by halves). By the end of fifteen hours in my company Fee was ready to rip my head off and stuff somewhere unmentionable. But I couldn't help it. How was I supposed to do this thing? Should I just walk up to her door and knock? Or leave a message? Send a letter? Call? For once in my over achieving life I had no clue what to do.  
  
******************  
  
He smiled as he watched her dressing in front of the mirror. The necessity for cold weather clothing during the winter in Khurdistan had been a blessing. Nothing disguised a pregnant woman like a large bulky fur coat and Syd had become increasingly adept at using them to hide her condition. But just now she was still dressed in her normal overlarge sweats and Sloppy Joes and the light silhouetted the rich curves of her breasts and belly that at 7 months were becoming increasingly prominent.  
  
They hadn't been able to risk the normal barrage of tests that a Western expectant mother would have had, forced by their peculiar circumstances to rely on a few medical textbooks and Sydney's athletes awareness of her changing body. But he hadn't been able to resist buying a copy of "What to expect when you are expecting" through the Net and it had turned into a great source of light relief, one that cracked Syd up every time she caught him reading it. Assassin chic indeed. At this rate his image was voluntarily going to be in tatters.  
  
He smiled wryly at the thought, gathering Sydney's coat from the bed behind her and holding it up so she could slip her arms more easily into the heavy fur. She anxiously checked the draw on the two guns she had concealed in the lining, fretting until he put his arms around her, their joined hands resting on her swollen abdomen, her anxious face reflected in the mirror.  
  
"It'll be fine."  
  
"It's our last briefing, Sark. We've only got six months left."  
  
He pulled her gently against him as he acknowledged the truth of her statement. "It's enough. It'll all be okay leannan. Don't fret."  
  
She spun in his grasp to face him, leaning in so he felt the press of her belly between them.  
  
"It's not fine Andrew! It's my Father this time! Not just Sloane. And I look like this!"  
  
She gesticulated wildly at her stomach, eyes more than a little unnerved, hair flying everywhere.  
  
He smoothed the errant strands behind her ear.  
  
"Nothing is going to happen, Syd. Don't worry. Just stay in your coat and keep as far away from your father as possible." He pressed his lips to her forehead. "Thank god you're not exactly a touchy-feely family."  
  
She managed to drag up a lopsided smile for that. "Yeah. At least he won't be expected a hug."  
  
Sark shuddered inwardly at how disastrous that would be. Holstering the last of his armoury he mentally assumed the persona of Ruslan Baranov once more, by now so familiar it was like slipping on a comfortable pair of slippers. Then, free hand near his gun and the other in the hollow of his "wife's" back they set out for the rendezvous point.  
  
This would work. It had to.  
  
******************  
  
Fee had as she had promised "buggered off to Seaworld", leaving me sitting in the hotel room in a state of complete indecisiveness. I knew that eventually my own inactivity would piss me off enough that I would do something. Which was how after 2 hours of examining the décor in my room I found myself hailing a cab and directing it to take me to Banner Avenue, where at number 32 there lived a Bristow, Sydney.  
  
******************  
  
Sark looked up from the plans he was translating. From the silence he had suspected as much - she had fallen asleep again. These days she tired easily, very little exertion instantly sending her off to slumber. It meant that the lion's share of their work fell on him but he couldn't bring himself to begrudge her that when he saw the exhaustion that carrying their child was piling on her slender frame.  
  
He padded into the bedroom and grabbed a blanket, tucking it around her where she dozed on the living room couch. Her eyes threatened to open for a minute before she gave up the battle and fell deeper into slumber. The baby was really taking it out of her.  
  
Sark went back to his translation, occasionally looking up to rest his eyes on the sleeping figure of his woman. With the final rendezvous with Sloane and Jack Bristow successfully scaled the only obstacle left was ensuring that he, Syd and the child would come through this entire experience in one piece. And he had some plans for that. And by God no one would stand in his way. Not Irina, not Sloane, and not Jack Bristow and the entire bloody CIA. And if they tried - well - there was a reason for his reputation.  
  
If anyone had been watching they might have shuddered at the way the normally expressive eyes went ice like and opaque as Sark thought about what he would do to anyone who would dare to try and harm his child or its mother.  
  
******************  
  
Well, here I was. When the taxi had pulled up to the corner I had sat frozen for long enough that the driver had had to snap at me to get me to move. I had thrust a bundle of bills at him and he had driven off, throwing me a disgusted look. No doubt he thought I was a complete nutter.  
  
It seemed a fairly typical Californian suburb, all carefully watered green vegetation and white painted bungalows.  
  
I examined the house in front of me dubiously. Yup - definitely the right address. But it certainly didn't look like the house of an ex-superspy. I mentally shrugged. I couldn't talk. If you believed half the rumours about my Dad he should be living in Dracula's Castle in deepest Transylvania, not on a rather nice estate in deepest Surrey.  
  
I loitered around on the pavement for a few minutes, still unsure if this was a sensible thing to do. Suddenly I really wished my Dad was with me. I never suffered from this kind of confusion when he was around. Admittedly if he was here now none of this would be necessary in the first place. God, I needed to get my arse in gear and stop wool-gathering. I shook my head in frustration and slipped through the garden gate before I could change my mind.  
  
***************** 


	3. Chapter 3

Sark squeezed her hand with the hand that wasn't holding his gun. She peered up at him with eyes that were already drowsy from the drugs that were slowly pushing her under.  
  
"You'll stay?"  
  
He squeezed her hand again in reassurance. He knew how she hated not being alert. He shared the feeling.  
  
"I promise. I'll be right here all the way through."  
  
"Good." She looked up at him with sleepy, faintly apprehensive eyes. "I'm glad you're here, Andrew."  
  
He quirked a half smile and swooped down to kiss her forehead. "Likewise, sweetheart. Likewise. Go to sleep now."  
  
With a murmur of assent she finally stopped fighting the drug cocktail and let it sweep her under. Sark waited a minute until he was sure she was unconscious and then with a curt nod allowed the team of medics who had been waiting patiently to descend on her.  
  
It hadn't been easy finding a clinic that combined absolute discretion with a willingness to allow a heavily armed man to be present for the caesarean but they had finally managed it, choosing this ultra discrete and unflappable facility in Switzerland. When they left all records would be burnt and the few staff that saw them would conveniently develop selective amnesia. For this service they had paid a great deal of money as well as threatening the Director of the clinic with what would happen if he did conveniently remember anything at any time in the future.  
  
With Syd due any day they had announced to Sovanov their intention to take a break for a few weeks. The Russian was so impressed by their success rate over the last 18 months and sufficiently intimidated by them that he agreed without question.  
  
And now the result of all that planning. His woman lying vulnerable on an operating table while these butchers cut her open. His fingers tightened reflexively on the gun and more than one medic glanced nervously at him before attending to the task at hand. They really wanted this operation to go well.  
  
And it did. Ten minutes later the operating theatre's studied calm was ripped apart by a thready, escalating roar, rapidly growing in strength as the new participant took this opportunity to inform the world that she had been comfortable and now she wasn't and what were they going to do about it?!  
  
For Sark, still gripping his gun with one hand and Sydney's hand with the other it had been a very long ten minutes. He couldn't see properly behind the screen of medics working over Sydney's abdomen but at that first indignant scream something lurched deep inside him. He touched Sydney's sleeping face, still peaceful despite the indignant wailing that echoed through the room.  
  
"Hear that Syd? Kid's got a good pair of lungs, I'll give you that."  
  
It took another few minutes before they had cut the cord and cleaned the baby up to their satisfaction but then Sark was presented with the living, breathing proof of his and Sydney's indiscretion.  
  
He met the medic's smile with a dubious look as she presented him with a pink wrapped bundle, but let go of Sydney's hand to gingerly arrange it in one arm, gun still ready in the other.  
  
"Mr Jones - you have a healthy daughter."  
  
He had a daughter?  
  
She was red and crumpled, covered in white paste and the blood of her birthing, glaring up at him with a ferocious scowl out of half opened kitten blue eyes, fingers waving frantically as she demanded everything.  
  
She was the ugliest thing he had ever seen.  
  
And he looked down into those indignant blue eyes and fell instantly and totally in love.  
  
*****************  
  
Of course after all that tension nobody seemed to be in. Typical. I sat down on the step to try and figure out my next move. I could break in but I didn't think that was the best option. Hi - I'm your daughter and a burglar! Nope - not a cunning plan. Or I could come back tomorrow - although that would mean driving Fee nuts with another night of fretting. Or I could go back to the hotel and leave a message. I had just decided that was the most sensible option when I noticed a woman walking along the sidewalk towards the house, laden with bags and with that unmistakeable "who the hell are you and what are you doing on my steps" look. Instantly I realised that time had just been called on my indecision.  
  
***********************  
  
For Sydney it was like being pulled up through a long tunnel. One minute she had happily floating in the black, next she was being dragged back into consciousness. There was a deep persistent ache in her abdomen and her body felt awkward, non responsive. And her eyes were crusty and uncomfortable. And there was a strange feeling of loss, as though something was missing. Something missing. Something.  
  
Sark flinched instinctively as Syd suddenly sat bolt upright, going from unconsciousness to full awareness in an instant. Her eyes scanned the room wildly, looking for god knows what.  
  
He shifted so she could see him and reached out to her as slowly as if he was trying to tame a wild thing.  
  
"Syd."  
  
Recognition and relief passed over her face within a millisecond of each other and she reached out to take his hand, her grip fever warm and slightly shaky.  
  
"Andrew." She looked around again, merely puzzled now, rather than alarmed. "Where are we - I don't recognise this place..Sark, why am I in a hospital? Wait a minute."  
  
He could actually see the moment when memory and recollection poured into her face. She looked around the room again, looked down and gingerly touched her abdomen, wincing slightly as the movement sent an ache through her. Then she snapped her head up again.  
  
"Andrew - the baby! Where's my baby?!"  
  
He could see her getting panicky again, and he reached out to calm her as she attempted to pull herself out of the bed, suddenly frantic to find what her body was telling her was missing.  
  
"She's okay Syd. She's fine."  
  
She stilled at the female pronoun.  
  
"She?"  
  
Sark smirked at her, a little lopsided grin that was full of too many emotions for her to analyse.  
  
"Yeah. We've got a daughter, Syd."  
  
"Oh.." Oh my god  
  
And even when Sark carefully placed a small pink swathed bundle in her arms and she saw the small, fuzz covered head and those kitten blue eyes all she was able to think was - oh my god, I have a daughter, over and over like a mantra, until she was laughing, caught between hysteria and tears at the madness of it all, while Sark kissed her knuckles, face plastered with that little smirk and looked at her and their child as though nothing else in the universe had any other meaning.  
  
****************  
  
I scrambled awkwardly up off the steps, reluctant to face anyone from an indefensible angle and waited while she covered the last few feet to the gate. Then there was a pause while we stared at each other - she obviously wondering who on earth I was. But she didn't seem worried, merely curious.  
  
On my side I was too busy gawping. Apart from the bee stung lips and the softness of her brown eyes this woman was a double of the photographs I had for Irina Derevko. But she couldn't be as Derevko would be in her 70's - if she was still alive. This woman looked like she was in her late 30's, or her early 40's at the most. And now I looked closer I could see the little differences, the darker hair, small laughter lines around the mouth and eyes and those bee stung lips. But otherwise the resemblance was uncanny. And I realised that unless my grandmother had another daughter that so closely resembled her then this slim brunette was probably my Mother. And again I had no idea what to do.  
  
We stood and stared at each other for a few minutes, sizing each other up. As the minutes had passed and I hadn't done anything threatening her stance had softened, wariness shifting to curiosity. And when I stuck my hands in my jeans pockets and hunched my shoulders protectively the wariness disappeared entirely in familiar recognition of adolescent awkwardness. A hint of a smile curled up the full lips and she shifted her book bag more comfortably onto one hip.  
  
"Hi - Are you looking for me? Are you one of my new lit students perhaps? I'm sorry that I don't recognise you, but give me time.."  
  
She thought I was one of her.students? Was she a teacher? There were so many questions I suddenly wanted to ask and I felt paralysed by the weight of them.  
  
She was still patiently watching me, a hint of a smile lurking around her lips. "My normal office hours are 12-3, but if it's really urgent we can discuss it." She slipped the book bag on to the ground and started rummaging head down in her handbag for her keys. "What's your name anyway? I'm assuming it's an issue with comparative literature 101 as I think I would know you if you did any of my other classes." My throat was dry and crusty and I coughed to clear it, the rough noise bringing those brown eyes back onto me. She frowned in concern, forehead wrinkling, eyes creased against the sun.  
  
"Are you okay? Would you like a drink of water? Just wait a second and I'll get you one from the fridge."  
  
"No." I reached out a hand to block her from going past me and she stopped, surprised, the first hint of a frown appearing. I cleared my throat again, suddenly desperate to get this over with.  
  
"Are you Sydney Bristow?" My voice was hoarse and a little squeaky and I cringed inwardly.  
  
She was still faintly amused but wariness was creeping back into her posture. She obviously thought I was nuts. I was making a great first impression. "Yes. And you are.?"  
  
I looked down at my feet, avoiding the question for a few seconds more, clearing my throat again.  
  
"My name is Elena."  
  
She was still watching me in polite incomprehension. Suddenly I couldn't bear the tension any more.  
  
"Elena Sark."  
  
I watched as her complexion blanched in shock and just blurted the rest out.  
  
"My Dad is Andrew Sark. And I think I'm your daughter."  
  
***************************  
  
There was nothing harder in his life than the day she walked away. Assassinations, abandonment, torture and imprisonment, he'd experienced them all. But none of them caused him as great a soul deep pain as the grief on her face as she desperately clutched their child for one last embrace before handing her back to him with hands that shook like an invalid. In her pockets was the disc necessary to access server 47 and bring down the Alliance, the combined price of her freedom and his "death". Behind them their home for the last few years was destroyed, reduced to ashes in an explosion that seemed to Sark a showily appropriate metaphor for the forcible destruction of their relationship. They were both trembling as they leaned against each for one last minute, trying to uproot the mutual dependency that kept them so closely bound together for so long. Finally he leaned forward to hold her for the last time, bathing her face in kisses, lips, eyes, cheeks down which the tears rang unashamedly, tasting the salt of her pain, and finally her forehead, feeling the grace of it as a form of twisted benediction. Then he moved away and when she made to follow shoved her gently backwards, even in this moment of forcible separation unable to physically hurt her.  
  
"Go."  
  
"Andrew.."  
  
"Go, Sydney. Now."  
  
She was hugging herself for reassurance now, unable to stop from reaching out to him, unable to stifle a whimper of hurt as he frantically back- pedalled in order not to touch her. And then he lifted his eyes to her and the sheer, naked animal hurt in them was so desperate that it stopped her in her tracks. He was right. They couldn't stretch this out. If they didn't it now they never would. She looked hungrily at the small whimpering bundle he held so tightly. Elena. Her baby girl. Who would grow up under a death sentence if they didn't do this, who's only realistic chance of living to adulthood relied on her parents having the strength to walk away from each other.  
  
Now.  
  
At this minute.  
  
Her sight was blurring with tears now, her eyes burning, nose running, leaving her wiping her face with her sleeves like a child. She stared at him, memorising everything, the anguish in his blue eyes, the tufts of blond hair, all over the place now, no trace in him of the well groomed assassin she had detested so cordially at the beginning. Then she started to back away, every step like a knife, distantly surprised that her footsteps in the snow weren't filled with bloody traces of the wounds that she was inflicting. He held her gaze and their child desperately as she backed away, biting his lip as though under torture. And it wasn't until she turned from him and started to walk away that she heard him croak out her name. She stiffened, the whispered plea hitting her like a slap between the shoulder blades, pulling her to a stop. For a moment they both stood frozen and then she lurched into motion again, walking away from him with strides that got faster with every step, until she was almost running across the snow, stumbling as her tears blurred her vision, frantic to turn round, but like Orpheus knowing that one look back would be her downfall.  
  
And if she had looked back she would have seen a sight many men had attempted to engineer but which only one woman had ever been able to make happen - Andrew Sark, broken, on his knees in the snow.  
  
***************  
  
I had never been as fascinated by a cup of tea as I was right now. That and the patterns on the table cloth. In fact I might just spend the rest of my life staring at them both. Especially if it meant that I wouldn't have to look up again. Maybe she had stopped crying by now, maybe I could risk it. Okay now, I know you might think I'm totally heartless but what would you do when a total stranger hustles you into her house, makes you tea, sits down at a table with you, stares at you as though you are a mirage and then bursts into tears?  
  
Feel deeply uncomfortable and stare down at the table top, that's what you do. Oh god this was awkward. Nothing was turning out like I expected it to. She seemed so upset! I had expected denial, rejection, rejoicing but not this heartbroken sobbing. Surely I wasn't such a disappointment?  
  
All I could hear now was the steady drip, drip of the coffee percolating. No more quiet sobs. Cautiously I looked up from my intense observation of the tablecloth.  
  
She was still wiping her eyes on a tissue but she seemed composed, face a little weary from emotional exhaustion, but calm, rather than taken over by the emotional firestorm I had witnessed earlier. As I straightened up she caught my look and gave me a slightly embarrassed shrug.  
  
"Sorry."  
  
I scrambled to reassure her, feeling very young and clumsy, desperate not to upset her further.  
  
"It's fine, fine. It really is..is there anything I can get you? Tea, water, anything? Both of us were struck with the realisation that our roles had somehow been switched. I had gone from guest to host in an about turn that had left us both a little confused.  
  
She waved off my offers, smiling only a little shakily as she got up to fix herself a coffee. Faced with a sudden silence I cast around for suitable topics of conversation that wouldn't cause either of us to become upset. The sun was pouring the windows, causing the wooden cupboards surfaces to glow richly. There were a number of cooking books piled on one shelf, with one propped open on the counter, a spatula marking the place. Corn chowder I noted. Sounded nice. The rest of the kitchen was stylish but messy, filled the little odds and ends that accrue when people don't entertain often and have no pretensions to minimalism. It was warm and friendly and I liked it.  
  
"It's a nice house."  
  
She glanced at me, smiling a little.  
  
"Thanks."  
  
I was casting around for conversational gambits, anything to keep away from the topics we really had to discuss. My Dad, love, betrayal, redemption, assassination, yada, yada.  
  
"Do you live here alone?"  
  
For a moment a shadow passed over her face and I froze, fearing I'd inadvertently wandered into some taboo area. Then it passed and she sat down again at the table with a sigh, placing her coffee cup on the wood with a small, definite clunk.  
  
"I was married for a short while. I'd didn't work out."  
  
I sat down opposite her, cradling my mug in my hands.  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
She smiled, a little wryly. "I'm not. It was a long time ago anyway."  
  
Suddenly I wanted to give her something, some kind of gift to make up for all the trauma I was causing by just waltzing cavalierly back into her life.  
  
"My Dad never married. I never got why before."  
  
She smiled at me, hazel eyes lighting up, and suddenly I felt a thrill of adrenaline and a sudden surge of totally unexpected affection. Whoa. This blood thicker than water thing actually worked. Bizarre. I looked down at my mug, feeling unaccountably shy and kind of awkward.  
  
"I never got why before.." I looked at her, really looked at her, the little lines around her eyes, the sweep of hair to her shoulders, the shape of cheekbone and chin and shoulder. And those eyes, those deep as the ocean, peat water eyes. I took a deep breath.  
  
".but now I think, maybe he was waiting for you."  
  
**************  
  
He gathered Elena closer in his arms. One fist had now made its way into her mouth and she was energetically sucking on it, a small silver of drool escaping. He smiled at her energetic messiness and dropped a kiss on her forehead, loving the smell of baby skin and the absolute trust she gave him. Unconditional love on both sides of this relationship, and he would do anything to keep her safe. Anything.  
  
Even this.  
  
With that thought in mind he took the final step, stepping through the unmarked door, ambling up to the startled secretary, who wasn't used to men holding babies disturbing the inner sanctum of this government agency.  
  
"My name is Andrew Sark. Please inform Mr Thomson that I am here to discuss a business opportunity."  
  
At the mention of the eminent name the secretary immediately became all business, calling straight through, showing him to a private room, offering him tea or coffee and biscuits all of which he declined.  
  
He didn't have to wait long. In a few minutes calm footsteps echoed down the marble hall with a measured inevitability. Still carrying Elena, Sark rose, standing to face the calm assessing eyes of Mr "Thomson" as the lean figure entered the room. Thomson's eyes flickered over Elena's baby features before nodding thoughtfully and returning her father's measured gaze.  
  
"Mr Sark. A pleasure, as always."  
  
They shook hands.  
  
"Mr Thomson, likewise."  
  
Sark took a deep breath, suddenly very aware of the ramifications and consequences of his actions. This choice would in some ways take away the freedom which he enjoyed above all else. But for his daughter's security he could handle a few limited shackles.  
  
"I believe you once offered me a.opportunity. I was merely wishing to enquire if the option was still available."  
  
Thomson smiled slightly, rocking back on his heels, hands in his pockets.  
  
"For such a talent as you, Mr Sark, opportunities are always open."  
  
The corner of Sark's mouth twitched slightly at the compliment. Distracted by a baby gurgle he looked down at his daughter who was observing the proceedings with bright button eyes.  
  
"Indeed. If that is still the case, subject to a few provisos, I would now be delighted to accept."  
  
Thomson smiled outright now, pursuing his lips and nodding his head slightly.  
  
"That's very good to hear Mr Sark. Would you have any particular start time in mind?"  
  
Sark looked down at the baby in his arms again and smirked wryly, before looking up to meet Thomson's eyes.  
  
"I think right now would be acceptable."  
  
"Ah."  
  
The two men regarded each other for a few seconds, fully aware of the significance of the moment. Then Thomson stuck out a hand again. Sark clasped it firmly in acceptance, silently pledging himself to this new cause.  
  
"In that case I can see no reason for further delay. Welcome to the SIS, Mr Sark. Welcome home."  
  
********************  
  
Sark shifted restlessly. In all the years he had been a single father, he and his daughter had established certain traditions. One of which was that they always met each other at the airport, unless it was severely impractical. In her very young days her nanny used to bring her, often still clad in furry sleeper pyjamas, dozing off in the back of the car while the chauffeur drove them both home, her hair smelling of strawberries. Just like her mother. He closed his eyes for a moment, caught off guard by the memory of the scent of Sydney's hair, spread out on a pillow beside him. It still hurt, even after all these years. He had never found a woman to match her and after a while had stopped trying. He had his daughter, the most precious gift a man like him could have. He had resolutely trained himself to believe that he didn't need anyone else.  
  
He shifted, checking the flight board impatiently. Elena's plane had landed 20 minutes ago and he was anxious to see her, to reinforce the fact that she was still coming home to him. Whatever she had learned, as long as she came home to him he could handle anything.  
  
Because that was his weakness. Everything else life had thrown at him he had handled with detached efficiency. But not his daughter, and not her mother. He had given up one to ensure the safety of the other and he still hurt from that choice 20 years later. But if his daughter rejected him as well he wasn't sure he could survive it.  
  
There, the first trickle of passengers was pouring out of the arrivals gate. Briskly he walked towards the barrier, searching for one familiar caramel head. There she was. He was about to call to her, eager to see the way her face would light up when she saw him, when he realised she was not alone. There were not one, but two brunettes making their way out the entrance hall. One was slightly taller than the other, holding the other's hand in a death grip, hair covering her face. But there was something infinitely familiar about the way she moved. The other, his daughter, was oblivious to anyone but her companion, chatting animatedly, free hand gesticulating. Some part of his mind noticed that she looked entirely happy, but the rest of his over active brain dismissed that, focusing entirely on her companion, every sense quivering. The hair was starting to stand up on the back of his neck and he had to fight the sudden and inexplicable urge to rapidly retreat. But while he stood there, frozen in space his choices abruptly narrowed as his daughter spotted him and waved, moving towards him, pulling the other woman behind her excitedly. He stood there, a condemned man, unable to do anything but wait as the executioner approached.  
  
Elena reached him first and threw her arms around him, vibrant young body bouncing into a hug. He returned it automatically, still staring at the figure behind her, hair still carefully covering her face. And then Elena pulled back and reached out to pull the other woman closer, and as she did so the stranger straightened, tucking her hair back behind her ear and he almost choked at the familiarity of the gesture, all his suspicions coming true. For the woman his daughter with was the one that had haunted his dreams all these years. His falcon in the dive. Sydney. Sydney Bristow.  
  
For a second he just stood, almost paralysed with shock as brown eyes met blue for a long, endless moment. And then she smiled at him and the sun came up all over again.  
  
*********************  
  
Well, I bet you want to know what happened next? Let's just say that we all got in a lot of transatlantic travel over the next few months, before my Mum finally decided that the logistics of having two people on one side of the ocean and another on the other really weren't working. Which is why we are celebrating Thanksgiving for the first time in my experience, at home in Surrey. Fee is watching TV in the living room and my Mum's cooking, singing Beach Boys songs over the cranberry sauce while my granddad Jack Bristow, (who is a really cool guy for an ex-CIA bloke) is complaining already about the pecan pie. She keeps flicking bits of gravy at him and he keeps grumpily dodging them. She's so happy it's infectious. I've even seen Jack crack a smile once or twice which my Dad dryly informed me is nothing short of miraculous.  
  
And my Dad? Well he's still my Dad. But he's lighter somehow, as though some huge burden has been lifted. And when he looks at my Mum it's like all the lights go on at once. It's faintly embarrassing to be in the same room as them. Talk about blatant. And she just smiles at him and keeps on doing whatever she's doing, but with just a little extra swing in her hips when she knows he's watching.  
  
I always thought that when my Dad finally got properly involved with a woman I'd be jealous. But I can't you know? It's just too big a thing for that. And after all I've got my Mum now and we're trying to make up for twenty years of lost time. We're getting there, bit by bit. I understand now why she had to let me go, and what it cost her, but what I can't understand, knowing my Dad as I do, is how he could bear to let her go, even for me. I asked him about it once and he had been uncharacteristically hesitant, picking his words with care.  
  
"I knew, that if she could have come with us she would have. And I hoped.that one day circumstances would be such that she could come back. I let her go, but I kept that hope."  
  
I had frowned at him, unconvinced by such a passive attitude from my normally proactive Dad. He smiled, amused by my expression and we sat for a moment in front of the fire, taking in the unfamiliar sounds of another person moving around in the house as my mother rearranged things to her liking. Finally he took pity on my confusion.  
  
"Sometimes 'Lena if you love something you have to let it go. And then if it comes back to you." he paused suddenly and I looked up at the interruption, following his gaze to where my Mother had slipped silently into the room and was leaning against the doorway, the firelight casting her hair in a nimbus of auburn streaked mink. She smiled at him and his face lit up as I ducked my head, feeling slightly intrusive, something in their faces too intimate for even my observation. But I didn't need him to finish the sentence; I knew what he was trying to say.  
  
Sometimes when you love something you have to let it go. And if it comes back to you it's yours forever. And for my Dad, I think it finally has. 


End file.
